The X-Files

The X-Files (1993–2002) is an American science fiction drama television series, which is a part of The X-Files franchise, created by Chris Carter. In the series, FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are the investigators of X-Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder is a believer in the existence of aliens and the paranormal while Scully, a skeptic, is assigned to make scientific analyses of Mulder's discoveries which could ultimately be used to debunk Mulder's work and thus return him to FBI mainstream.

Scully: By reputation. He's an Oxford educated psychologist, who wrote a monograph on serial killers and the occult, that helped to catch Monty Props in 1988. Generally thought of as the best analyst in the violent crimes section. He had a nickname at the academy... Spooky Mulder.

Section Chief Blevins: Are you familiar with the so-called X-Files?

Scully: I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena.

Section Chief Blevins: More or less. The reason you're here, Agent Scully, is we want you to assist Mulder on these X-Files. You'll write field reports on your activities along with your observations on the validity of the work.

Scully: Am I to understand that you want me to debunk the X-Files Project, sir?

Agent Colton: Let's not get carried away. I'm going to solve these murders, but what I would like from you is to go over the case histories, maybe come down to the crime scene.

Scully: Do you want me to ask Mulder?

Agent Colton: Okay, if he wants to come and do you a favour, great. But make sure he knows this is my case. Dana, if I can break a case like this one, I'll be getting my bump up the ladder. And you, maybe you won't have to be Mrs. Spooky any more.

Mulder: She should be encouraged to tell her story, not to keep it inside, it's important that you let her.

Darlene: Important to who? I have my daughter back, I don't want any more trouble. Besides she can hardly remember anything.

Mulder: But she will remember one day, one way or another, even if it's only in dreams. And when she does, she's gonna wanna talk about it, she's gonna need to talk about it.

Darlene: Like I did? Listen to me, all of my life I have been ridiculed, for speaking my mind.

Mulder: But it was the truth, Darlene.

Darlene: The truth has caused me nothing but heartache, I don't want the same thing for her.

Mulder: You know when I was a kid, I had this ritual. I closed my eyes before I walked into my room, 'cause I thought that one day when I opened them my sister would be there. Just lying in bed, like nothing ever happened. You know I'm still walking into that room, everyday of my life.

Mulder: Hey, that's a nice tattoo, what is that?

Bartender: What's it look like?

Mulder: Flying saucer. You don't really believe in that stuff, do ya?

Bartender: I take it you don't.

Mulder: No, I think it's all just a bunch of crazy people howling at the moon.

Bear: Then I'm the one flying you. My name's Bear. The plane's across the way, provisions are loaded. Grab your gear.

Hodge: Oh, could we see some credentials?

Bear: Credentials. The only credentials that I have is that I'm the only pilot willing to fly you up there. You don't like those credentials... walk.

Mulder: [taking his shirt off for a physical exam] Before anyone passes judgment, may I remind you - we are in the Arctic.

Hodge: Alright, parasitic diagnostic procedure requires that each of us provide a blood and a stool sample.

Bear: A stool sample?

Murphy: Well, this kind of travel always makes that kind of tough... for me.

Mulder: Okay, anyone got the morning sports section handy?

Bear: I ain't dropping my cargo for no one.

Mulder: We're all wired and hypersensitive, it'll be good to get a fresh start in the morning.

Scully: Mulder, I don't want to waste a second trying to find a way to kill this thing.

Mulder: I don't know if we should kill it. This area of the ice sheet was formed over a meteor crater. The worm lived in ammonia. It survived sub-zero temperatures. Theorists in alternative life-designs believe in ammonia-supported life systems on planets with freezing temperatures.

Scully: No.

Mulder: The meteor that crashed here a quarter of a million years ago may have carried that type of life to earth.

Mulder: It's still there, Scully, two hundred thousand years down in the ice.

Mulder: Well, if you were a terrorist, there probably isn't a more potent symbol of American progress and prosperity. And if you're an opponent of big science, NASA itself represents a vast money trench that exists outside the crucible and debate of the democratic process. And of course there are those futurists who believe the Space Shuttle is a rusty old bucket that should be mothballed. A dinosaur spacecraft built in the 70's by scientists setting their sights on space in an ever declining scale.

Scully: And we thought we could rest easy with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mulder: Not to mention certain fringe elements who accuse our government itself of space sabotage. The failure of the Hubble Telescope and the Mars Observer are directly connected to a conspiracy to deny us evidence.

Scully: Evidence of what?

Mulder: Alien civilization.

Scully: Oh. Of course.

Mulder: Hey, Scully, we send those men up into space to unlock the doors of the universe, and we don't even know what's behind them.

Mulder: You never wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, Scully?

Scully: Guess I missed that phase.

Mulder: [after seeing a shuttle launch from the control room] I have to admit, that fulfilled one of my boyhood fantasies.

Scully: Yeah, it ranks right up there with getting a pony and learning how to braid my own hair.

Mulder: Then what can I say? How can I disprove lies that are stamped with an official seal?

Section Chief McGrath: That will be all, Mr Mulder.

Mulder: You can deny all the things I've seen, all the things I've discovered, but not for much longer because too many others know what's happening out there. And no one, no government agency, has jurisdiction over the truth.

Deep Throat: Mulder, the continental United States is surrounded by an electronic fence that reaches 15,000 miles into space. We use it to track and monitor the 7,087 man-made objects that orbit the earth. Last night at 23:17 that fence was breached.

Section Chief McGrath: Why did you countermand my decision? Mulder's conduct was in clear violation not only of bureau procedures but of federal law.

Deep Throat: Yes.

Section Chief McGrath: I don't understand. The committee's case was air tight. You've ruined the last best chance we had to get rid of him.

Deep Throat: I appreciate your frustration, but you and I both know Mulder's work is a singular passion-- poses a most unique dilemma. But his occasional insubordination is in the end, far less dangerous.

Section Chief McGrath: With respect sir, less dangerous than what?

Deep Throat: Than having him exposed to the wrong people. What he knows... what he thinks he knows... Always keep your friends close, Mr. McGrath... but keep your enemies closer.

Deep Throat: Well, it was the most interesting project. Highest level of classification. All records have since been destroyed. And those who knew of it, denied knowledge of its existence. It existed during the height of the cold war. We got wind the Russians were fooling around with Eugenics. Rather primitively, I might add. Trying to crossbreed top scientists, athletes... to come up with the superior soldier. Naturally, we jumped on the band wagon.

Scully: She was kidnapped from the social services home around 11:00pm last night. Looks like someone was afraid she might remember too much.

Mulder: Someone or something, Scully?

Scully: Connecticut state troopers set up roadblocks within half an hour. Nothing.

Mulder: Maybe they weren't looking in the right direction. (points up at the sky)

Eve 6: You and you. You have 46 chromosomes. The Adams and the Eves... we have 56. We have extra chromosomes. Number 4, 5, 12, 16, and 22. This replication of chromosomes also produces additional genes. Heightened strength. Heightened intelligence.

Mulder: Heightened psychosis.

Eve 6: Save the best for last.

Eve 6: Cut off the chains... then we'll talk.

Mulder: They're probably there for a good reason.

Eve 6: No. Bad reason. I paid too much attention to a guard. Bit into his eyeball. I meant it as a sign of affection.

Mulder: There's something else I haven't told you about myself, Scully. I hate fire. Hate it. Scared to death of it.

Scully: Mulder? Are you sure you don't want me to help you out on this one?

Mulder: Sooner or later, a man's got to face his demons.

Mulder: But there have been cases of pyrokinetics, people who can control and conduct fire.

Beatty: Well, I've seen fire bend around corners, seen it bounce like a rubber ball. Fire's got a certain genius, you know? A certain demon poetry. It's like it's got a mind of it's own. But I've never seen one that can defy the laws of physics, not when you figure it out.

Beatty: There have been some arson fires in Seattle lately and, uh, Pennsylvania that burn so hot that the firemen can't put them out. 7,000 degrees. I mean, hosing that down just makes it worse.

Mulder: How's that?

Beatty: Uh, the, uh, reaction is so intense that it splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Just adds fuel to the fire.

Mulder: Ten years it's taken me to forget about this woman and she shows up in my life with a case like this.

Scully: So she shows up knowing the power she has over you and then she makes you walk through fire, is that it?

Mulder: Phoebe is fire.

Mulder: Well, that's one of the luxuries of hunting down aliens and genetic mutants. You rarely get to press charges.

Scully: I thought it would be a better explanation under the circumstances.

Mulder: What you're really saying is that you didn't want to go on record admitting that you believed in Boggs! The bureau would expect something like that from "Spooky" Mulder, but not Dana Scully.

Scully: I thought that you'd be pleased that I opened myself to extreme possibilities.

Mulder: Dana... open yourself up to extreme possibilities only when they're the truth.

Mulder: Dana, after all you've seen, after all the evidence, why can't you believe?

Scully: I'm afraid. I'm afraid to believe.

Scully: Last time you were that engrossed, it turned out you were reading the Adult Video News.

Scully: You set us up. You’re in on this with Lucas Henry. This was a trap for Mulder because he helped put you away. Well, I came here to tell you that if he dies because of what you’ve done, four days from now, no one will be able to stop me from being the one that will throw the switch and gas you out of this life for good, you son of a bitch!

Boggs: Dana... [in Mulder's voice] You're the one who believed me.

Scully: No! No, I do not believe you!

Boggs: If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe yourself.

Scully: Did Boggs confess?

Mulder: No, no, it was five hours of Boggs "channeling." After three hours I asked him to summon up the soul of Jimi Hendrix and requested 'All Along the Watchtower'. You know, the guy's been dead for 20 years but he hasn't lost his touch.

Mulder: Steve Wallenberg had a wife and two kids. One of his boys is an all-star on his football team now. I pulled that trigger two seconds earlier and Wallenberg would be here to see his kid play. Instead, I've got some dead man robbing jewelry stores and sending me haikus.

Scully: What are you going to do?

Mulder: I know what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to hang around and wait for Barnett to send me another valentine.

Mulder: Thanks, Henderson, I owe you one.

Henderson: Promises, promises.

Deep Throat: I know why you've contacted me. Listen and I'll explain. I am not particularly proud of the way in which this matter was handled, but, like it or not, John Barnett is a fact of life.

Deep Throat: The world's reaction to such knowledge would be far too dangerous.

Mulder: Dangerous. You mean in a sense of outrage, like the reaction to the Kennedy assassinations or M.I.A.s or radiation experiments on terminal patients, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Roswell, the Tuskegee experiments, where will it end? Oh, I guess it won't end as long as…men like you decide what is truth.

Byers: That's why we like you, Mulder. Your ideas are weirder than ours.

Deep Throat: You're awfully quiet, Mr. Mulder.

Mulder: I'm wondering which lie to believe.

Scully: From the trucker’s description, the shape he fired on could conceivably have been a mountain lion.

Mulder: Conceivably.

Scully: The National Weather Service last night reported atmospheric conditions in this area that were possibly conducive to lightning.

Mulder: Possibly.

Scully: It is feasible that the truck was struck by lightning, creating the electrical failure.

Mulder: It’s feasible.

Scully: And you know, there’s a marsh over there. The lights the driver saw may have been swamp gas.

Mulder: [trying to distract Eugene Tooms] I'm looking for my dog. His name is Heinrich. He's a Norwegian Elkhound. I use him to hunt moose!

Mulder: You think they would have taken me more seriously if I wore the grey suit?

Scully: But sir, the very nature of the X-Files cases often precludes orthodox investigation.

Skinner: Are you suggesting that the bureau adopt separate standards for you and Agent Mulder?

Scully: No, sir.

Skinner: Are you suggesting that Agent Mulder obstructs you from proper procedure?

Scully: No, sir. If anything, I'm suggesting that these cases be reviewed with... an open mind.

Mulder: If there's an ice tea in that bag, could be love.

Scully: Must be fate, Mulder. Root beer.

Mulder: They're out to put an end to the X-Files, Scully. I don't know why, but any excuse will do. Now, I don't really care about my record, but you'd be in trouble just for sitting in this car and I'd hate to see you to carry an official reprimand in your file because of me.

Scully: Fox....

Mulder: I... I... even made my parents call me "Mulder".

Scully: Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anybody but you.

Mulder: Well, have you ever thought about calling one of them all day long and then all of a sudden the phone rings and it's one of them calling you?

Scully: Does this pitch somehow end with a way for me to lower my long distance charges?

Mulder: I believe in psychic connections, and evidence suggests that it's stronger between family members, strongest of all between twin siblings that shared the same womb.

Scully: OK, maybe. But in this case, one sibling has closer ties to a frozen fudgesicle than he does to his own brother.

Mulder: Arthur Grable is not dead. He's in a state of consciousness that no human has ever returned from. And what if that state allows one to develop psychic ability to a potential that the conscious mind is too preoccupied to explore or believe in? He could use that ability to control his brother to kill those scientists.

Barrington: This is Arthur Grable. Uh, because of the massive internal damage to his body caused by the car accident, we could only preserve the head.

Scully: Wouldn't your client find it somewhat inconvenient to be thawed out in the future, only to discover he had no functional mobility?

Barrington: We believe that by the time science figures a way to revive our clients...

Mulder: ... you'll also know how to clone new bodies for them.

Barrington: Exactly. This technology is progressing faster than anyone thought possible. Ask anyone here at the university. So, while for us the passing of each second brings our bodies closer to death, for our clients it brings them closer to life.

Scully: You don't really think that Roland ...

Mulder: Besides Nollette and Keats, he's the only person we can prove was in the lab that night.

Scully: Yes, but we're talking about a sophisticated fluid dynamics equation. Roland Fuller barely has an IQ of 70.

Mulder: We wanted to believe... we wanted to call out. On August 20th and September 5th 1977, two spacecraft were launched from the Kennedy Space Flight Center, Florida. They were called Voyager. Each one carries a message. A gold-plated record depicting images, music and sounds of our planet, arranged so that it may be understood if ever intercepted by a technologically mature extraterrestrial civilization. Thirteen years after its launch, Voyager I passed the orbital plane of Neptune and essentially left the solar system. Within that time there were no further messages sent, nor are any planned. We wanted to listen. On October 12th 1992 NASA initiated the high resolution microwave survey. A decade long search by radio telescope scanning ten million frequencies for any transmission by extraterrestrial intelligence. Less than one year later first term Senator Richard Brian successfully championed an amendment which terminated the project. I wanted to believe, but the tools had been taken away. The X-Files had been shut down. They closed our eyes... our voices have been silenced.... our ears now deaf to the realms of extreme possibilities.

Mulder: Deep Throat said "trust no one." And that's hard, Scully. Suspecting everyone, everything, it wears you down. You even begin to doubt what you know is the truth. Before, I could only trust myself. Now, I can only trust you...and they've taken you away from me.

Mulder: It should be right here. The entire tape is blank.

Scully: You know, an electrical surge in the outlet during the storm may have degaussed everything, erasing the entire tape. You still have nothing.

Mulder: I may not have the X-Files, Scully, but I still have my work. And I've still got you. And I still have myself.

Matheson: I take it you're familiar with the high-resolution microwave survey?

Mulder: The search for extraterrestrial radio signals. They shut it down.

Matheson: You have to get to the radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. I'll try to delay them as long as I can but my guess is you'll have at least twenty-four hours. After that, I can no longer hold off the Blue Beret U.F.O. Retrieval Team. And they have been authorized to display terminal force.

Mulder: What am I looking for?

Matheson: Contact.

Mulder: Have you ever been to San Diego?

Scully: Yeah.

Mulder: Did you check out the Palomar observatory?

Scully: No.

Mulder: From 1948 until recently, it was the largest telescope in the world. The idea and design came from a brilliant and wealthy astronomer named George Ellery Hale. Actually, the idea was presented to Hale one night. while he was playing billiards, an elf climbed in his window and told him to get money from the Rockefeller Foundation for a telescope.

Scully: And you're worried that all your life, you've been seeing elves?

Mulder: In my case... little green men.

Scully: But, Mulder... during your time with the X-Files, you've seen so much.

Mulder: That's just the point. Seeing is not enough, I should have something to hold onto. Some solid evidence. I learned that from you.

Scully: Flatworms are what are known as obligate endoparasites. They live inside of the host entering the body through ingestion of larvae or eggs. They are not creatures that go around attacking people.

Scully: Mulder, this is amazing! [looking at the flukeman] Its vestigial features seem parasitic, but it has primate physiology. Where the hell did it come from?

Mulder: I don't know. But it looks like I'm gonna have to tell Skinner that his suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm after all.

Scully: Somebody shoved this under my door. I guess you really do have a friend in the FBI. And, Mulder, when you see Skinner to hand in field report, I hope that you know that I'd consider it more than a professional loss if you decided to leave.

Mr. X: Why else? To build a better soldier. Sustained wakefulness dulls fear, heightens aggression. Science had just put a man on the moon. So now they looked to science to win a losing war.

Mulder: And Willig and Cole were the lab rats.

Mr. X: Lab rats with the highest kill ratio in the Marine Corps. Four thousand-plus confirmed kills for a thirteen-man squad.

Mulder: You think Cole's behind what's happening now?

Mr. X: I'm not here to do your thinking, Agent Mulder. All I know is, that Augustus Cole hasn't slept in twenty-four years.

...

Mulder: So how do I contact you?

Mr. X: You can't

Mulder: I may still need more.

Mr. X: You still don't get it, do you? Closing the X-Files, separating you and Scully was only the beginning. The truth is still out there, but it's more dangerous. The man we both knew paid for that information with his life, a sacrifice I'm not willing to make.

Salvatore Matola: They said it'd be like living two lifetimes. At- at first, that's what it was like. Not having to sleep at all made us feel like nothin' could touch us, you know? We'd do 24 hour patrols, night ambushes, you know, and that type of thing.

Mulder: And you never got tired?

Salvatore Matola: No. Not so that we had to sleep. And then, nothing that the pills couldn't fix.

Mulder: Serotonin?

Salvatore Matola: Yeah.

Mulder: How long did this go on?

Salvatore Matola: Quite a while, I'd say. Quite a while - until we stopped taking orders from the company commander in Saigon.

Krycek: You mean the entire squad went AWOL?

Salvatore Matola: Yeah, somethin' like that.

Mulder: Well, then who did you take orders from?

Salvatore Matola: We just made up missions as we went along, until it didn't matter anymore who we were killing. Farmers, women. Outside of Phu Bai, there was this school...they were just kids.

Mulder: If this man is an abductee, I need to know more about him, his personal history. Each abduction case is different.

Lucy Kazdin: That material's not been made available to us.

Mulder: And nobody's thought to call the hospital for records?

Lucy Kazdin: Look, Agent Mulder. The guy's a psycho. Your object is to keep him on the phone. The longer you do, the more chance he's not going to kill anybody. We stop to do a Freudian analysis, next thing we know, we've got four dead hostages. So whatever crap you got to make up about space men or UFOs, just keep him on the phone.

Duane Barry: They're, uh... they're talking to Duane Barry. But they don't speak. He can hear what they're saying. They can... read his mind.

Scully: Sometimes when you want to believe so badly, you end up... looking too hard.

Lucy Kazdin: I actually called you down here for another reason, Agent Mulder. Uh... in the x-rays, the surgeon found several pieces of metal. In his gums, in his sinus cavity, and one in the abdomen. I had them checked, I felt you'd want to know... and there were tiny drill holes in his left and right rear molars. A dentist who examined them said they could not have been done with any of the current equipment in use... not without chipping or damaging the tooth. Anyway... I thought you ought to know.

Scully: No, you've got to get him out of there now or he's going to be killed!

Krycek: How can you be sure?

Scully: Because Duane Barry is not what Mulder thinks he is.

Scully: Mulder, it's me. I just had something incredibly strange happen. This piece of metal that they took out of Duane Barry, it has some kind of code on it. I ran it through a scanner, and some kind of serial number came up. What the hell is this thing, Mulder? It's almost as if... it's almost as if somebody was using it to catalog him... Mulder! I need your help! Mulder! [shouts] Mulder!

Skinner: There's only one thing I can do, Agent Mulder. As of right now, I'm reopening the X-Files. That's what they fear the most.

Mulder: [holding up a cigarette butt] I found this in Agent Krycek's car. He doesn't smoke. Agent Krycek was the last person with Duane Barry before he died. He was also the last person to see the tram operator before he disappeared. When I got to the top of Skyland Mountain, I saw an unmarked helicopter working the area. I believe that Agent Krycek gave away the whereabouts of Duane Barry and Agent Scully to whoever he's working with.

Skinner: And who is that?

Mulder: I don't know, the military? Some covert organization within the government? Whoever it is that man who smokes those cigarettes works for.

Skinner: Why?

Mulder: Because Agent Scully got too close to whatever it is they're trying to deny. Because she had hard and damning evidence, that metallic implant in her possession. Or because her termination would prevent further involvement with me and my work.

Mr. X: This reaches beyond any of us, Mister Mulder. Even my predecessor.

Mulder: I want an answer!

Mr. X: Why kill Duane Barry if there was nothing to hide?

Mulder: You mean the government?

Mr. X: There are no answers for you, Mister Mulder. They only have one policy... Deny everything.

...

Mr. X: You've wasted a trip, Mister Mulder. There's nothing the Senator can do for you now.

Mulder: What?

Mr. X: Not without committing political suicide.

Mulder: Why? Do they have something on him?

Mr. X: They have something on everyone, Mister Mulder. The question is when they'll use it.

Kristen Kilar: Are you about to ask what a normal person like me is doing in a place like this?

Mulder: How do you define normal?

Kristen Kilar: Misha, red wine... I don't. How do you?

Mulder: All I know is... normal is not what I feel.

Kristen Kilar: You've lost someone. Not a lover... a friend.

Mulder: It's a stiff price, though. Look at yourself - drinking blood, living in darkness, unable to see your reflection in a mirror. Or is that just a myth?

The Son: I can't be seen in a mirror. Look… anything worth anything has a price and when I'm standing next to your deathbed looking as young as I look right now and I see that fear in your eyes at the moment of death … then, then tell me the price is too stiff.

Mulder: It's more likely I'll be looking in your eyes at the moment before they lead you into the gas chamber. That's a moment you won't have to face if you tell me where the others are.

The Son: Why would I? They're the only ones that can kill me.

Mulder: Well, if you are what you say you are, I know what can kill you.

The Son: Don't you want to live forever?

Mulder: Not if drawstring pants come back in style.

The Son: Look, what nobody realizes is that there is no afterlife. I know this. Listen, listen, I know this because when we prolong our lives by taking theirs all I see is such …horror in their eyes and that's because at that moment they're face-to-face with death and then suddenly they realize there's nothing else. There's no heaven. There's no soul. There's just rot and there's just decay. And I will never, ever, ever, ever have to face that.

Mr. X: This high-capacity compact SIG Sauer .40 caliber weapon is pointed at your head to stress my insistence that your search for who put your partner on that respirator desist immediately!

Mulder: You ignore my call for help and then you expect me to do what you say-- you go to hell!

Mr. X: You got him killed! You got her killed! That’s not going to happen to me! You’re my tool, you understand? I come to you when I need you! Right now, you’re heading in a direction that can lead them right here.

Mulder: What the hell are you talking about?

Mr. X: You’re not supposed to know. That’s the point.

Mulder: I owe her more than just sitting around doing nothing.

Mr. X: She was a good soldier, Mulder, but there’s nothing you can do to bring her back.

Mulder: She’s not dead.

Mr. X: [laughing] Listen to you. Listen. You’re a damn schoolboy, Mulder. You have no idea. No idea!

Mulder: Okay, then tell me. Tell me!

Mr. X: ...I used to be you. I was where you are now. But you’re not me, Mulder. I don’t think you have the heart. Walk away. Grieve for Scully and then never look back. You will be able to live with yourself, Mulder... on the day you die.

Skinner: There is no police report of this incident, Agent Mulder, and there is no body. You know that.

Mulder: Since I am unfamiliar with any such incident, sir, no, how would I know that?

Skinner: Knock it off!

Mulder: How's it feel? Constant denial of everything, questions answered with a question.

Mulder: Oh, you can have it all, you can have my badge, you can have the X-Files, just tell me where he is.

Skinner: And then what? He sleeps with the fishes? We're not the mafia, Agent Mulder. I know it's easy to forget but we work for the Department of Justice.

Mulder: That's what I want.

Skinner: Agent Scully was a fine officer. More than that... I liked her. I respected her. We all know the field we play on and we all know what can happen in the course of a game. If you were unprepared for all the potentials, then you shouldn't step on the field.

Melissa Scully: I don't have to be psychic to see that you're in a very dark place. Much darker than where my sister is. Willingly walking deeper into darkness cannot help her at all. Only the light...

Melissa Scully:[angrily] Why don't you just drop your cynicism and your paranoia and your defeat. You know, just because it's positive and good, doesn't mean it's silly or trite.

Skinner: When I was eighteen, I, uh... I went to Vietnam. I wasn't drafted, Mulder, I- I enlisted in the Marine Corps the day of my eighteenth birthday. I did it on a blind faith. I did it because I believed it was the right thing to do. I don't know, maybe I still do. Three weeks into my tour, a ten-year-old North Vietnamese boy walked into camp covered with grenades and I, uh... I blew his head off from a distance of ten yards. I lost my faith. Not in my country or in myself, but in everything. There was just no point to anything anymore. One night on patrol, we were, uh... caught... and everyone- everyone fell. I mean, everyone. I looked down at my body from outside of it. I didn't recognize it at first. I watched the V.C. strip my uniform, take my weapon and I remained in this thick jungle... peaceful... unafraid... watching my- my dead friends. Watching myself. In the morning, the corpsmen arrived and put me in a body bag until... I guess they found a pulse. I woke in a Saigon hospital two weeks later. I'm afraid to look any further beyond that experience. You? You are not. Your resignation is unacceptable.

Mulder:[realizing] You. [exhales heavily] You gave me Cancer Man's location. You put your life in danger.

Skinner: Agent Mulder, every life, every day, is in danger. That’s just life.

Mulder: [voice-over] Scully and I are in the third day of a month-long quarantine, undergoing level 4 decon procedures. We are so far without symptoms of fungal contamination. All our specimens and field notes were confiscated by the military biohazard corps prior to our evacuation. Their presence has delayed for an indefinite period the arrival of the USGS data retrieval team. I suspect, though, that there will be little left for them to retrieve. There are no plans at present to explore further any of the hundreds of volcanically active mountains in the Cascade Range, including Mount Avalon. All access points to that volcano have been sealed off by army engineers.... Of the members of the Firewalker descent team, only Trepkos and O'Neil remain unaccounted for. They are presumed dead, and the search for them has been abandoned. Firewalker, however, was recovered, though its sensory and locomotive systems were found to be irreparably damaged. The data it collected from the earth's interior will never be known. And of the events that occurred at Mount Avalon between the 11th and 13th of November, 1994, mine stands as the only record.

Trepkos: [on video] Scientific data? We're talking about revisiting the very origin of the earth, peering into the fire where it all began - a human endeavor more important even than man's exploration of space.

Mazeroski: There's something I think you ought to see first. They call themselves the Church of the Red Museum. They're followers of a guy named Odin that moved out here from California three years ago and bought a ranch.

Mazeroski: Well, you gotta admit, it takes some big ones to set down in the middle of cow country and start a church like his.

Old Man: Business changed. People changed too.

Mulder: In what way?

Old Man: Competition. Used to get by with fifty milk cows. Now, you got to have five hundred. Used to turn them out to pasture, now you keep them in pens and grain feed them.

Scully: You said you wanted to show us something.

Old Man: You're looking at it. See those men over there? Well, they're injecting the cattle with something called B.S.T. Bovine somatotrophin.

Scully: A genetically-engineered growth hormone.

Old Man: Yeah, shoot them up and the cow will produce ten percent more milk. Feed it to beef cattle, more meat on the hoof. Changed the business. Changed a whole lot of things.

Scully: How do you mean?

Old Man: Well, that, uh, fracas in town this afternoon. Ten, even five years ago, never would have happened. People around here have changed... gotten mean... spiteful... dog-eat-dog. We had seven rapes here last year by high school boys. Well, that, um... this, this business of the kids being found in the woods... well, I think that you're going to find it all comes from the same root source.

Mulder: The growth hormone.

Mulder: You know, for a holy man, you've got quite a knack for pissing people off.

Scully: So, you started to tell me about walk-ins but I'm not sure if I grasped the finer points.

Mulder: Well, it, it's kind of a new age religion based on an old idea. That if you, uh, lose hope or despair and want to leave this mortal coil, you become open and vulnerable.

Scully: I just got the toxicology report back on the broken vial. The residual substance couldn't be analyzed because it contained synthetic corticosteroids with unidentified amino acids. That's "Purity Control," Mulder.

Mulder: Do you know what you're saying, Scully?

Scully: The man who died in that plane crash was inoculating those kids with antibodies derived from what may have been an extraterrestrial source.

Mulder: He's been injecting those kids with alien DNA.

Scully: No, Mulder, that was never proven conclusively.

Mulder: But it's the same substance we found in the Erlenmeyer flask, isn't it? The same material my Deep Throat contact died for.

Scully: Yes.

Mulder: It all makes sense. The money in the briefcase, they've been conducting an experiment here. Somebody's been paying to have those kids injected with alien DNA to see how they'd react. It's been going on for years.

Scully: Good, because I put it back in that drawer with all those other videos that aren't yours.

Scully: [playing a video tape] This is Michelle Charters. She's a registered nurse at a convalescent home in Worchester, Massachusetts.

Mulder: What happened to her?

Scully: According to Miss Charters, she was raped. The abrasions and contusions here would be consistent with her claims as would be the medical report which cites the kind of injury and tearing associated with sexual trauma.

Mulder: Where did you get this? Violent Crimes?

Scully: No. The woman made the video herself. It seems that no one will believe her story.

Mulder: Why not?

Scully: Because she claims to have been raped by an invisible entity. A spirit being.

Mulder: I have several X-Files that document similar cases.

Scully: I know. I've been here since 6:00 this morning going through them.

Mulder: Well, then you know none of them have ever been substantiated.

Scully: Not surprisingly.

Mulder: Given the emotional and psychological violence of rape, the face or identity of the attacker is often blurred or erased from memory. That he could be perceived as invisible is a logical leap for me.

Scully: Yes. But this case is different.

Mulder: Why?

Scully: The victim has filed a lawsuit against the government. She seems to be certain who the spirit being is.

Mulder: I think you're right, Scully.

Scully: About?

Mulder: What's been happening is the result of the medication, but not the medication the Doctor's been giving them.

Scully: Mulder, mushrooms aren't medication. They taste good on hamburgers, but they don't raise the dead.

Mulder: Shamans have used them for centuries to gain entrance to the spirit world.

Scully: I think you've been reading too much Carlos Castaneda.

Mulder: Ask any anthropologist then.

Scully: I know --- a shaman gets intoxicated, he has dreams or hallucinations, and he interprets them. I don't think it's any more magical than that.

Mulder: I don't know how else to explain what's happening here.

Scully: Well, I think, if anything, these mushrooms are a poison to the system and I think that's what killed Hal Arden.

Mulder: And raped Michelle Charters and killed those two orderlies? Something's been unleashed here, Scully. I don't know how to explain it, but it has something to do with those pills.

Mulder: I...I think you're looking too hard, Scully, for something that's not there. I think Michelle Charters concocted this story to get out of a job she hates.

Scully: Her lip required 13 stitches. The blow to her head resulted in a subdural hematoma. That's quite a concoction.

Scully: What if there's a connection?

Mulder: Between the rape case and the Alzheimer's? When they're not drawing childlike pictures they're brutal sex offenders?

Mulder: You think that Michelle Charters was raped by a 74-year-old schizophrenic?

Scully: It's possible.

Mulder: An invisible 74-year-old schizophrenic?

Scully: Well, maybe it's not in the medication. Maybe it's the place itself.

Mulder: Are you saying that the building's haunted? If you are, you've been working with me for too long, Scully.

Scully: I'm talking about an environmental reason behind what's happening there. Even the disinfectant couldn't mask that smell. Who knows what's breeding behind the walls or in the sub-structure. Some fungal contaminants have been known to cause delusions, dementia, violent behavior.

Mulder: During their time, Chaney's and Ledbetter's ideas weren't very well received by their peers. Using psychology to solve a crime was something like, um ...

Scully: Believing in the paranormal?

Mulder: Exactly. There's another mystery.

Scully: Which is?

Mulder: Well, I'd like to know why this policewoman would suddenly drive her car into a field the size of Rhode Island and for no rhyme or reason dig up the bones of a man who's been missing for fifty years. I mean, unless there was a neon sign saying "Dig Here" --

Scully: I guess that's why we're going to Aubrey.

Mulder: Yes, and also I've always been intrigued by women named B.J.

Mulder: Well, on a basic cellular level, we're the sum total of all our ancestors' biological matter. But what if more than biological traits get passed down from generation to generation? What if I like sunflower seeds because I'm genetically predisposed to liking them?

Mulder: There are countless stories of twins separated at birth who end up in the same occupation, marrying the same kind of people, each naming their child Waldo.

Scully: Waldo?

Mulder: Jung wrote about it when he talked about the collective unconscious. It's genetic memory, Scully.

Scully: Mulder, I don't think B.J. was in the woods that night because of engine failure.

Mulder: What are you talking about?

Scully: Well, the Motel Black would have been a perfect meeting place. Away from town, away from his wife.

Mulder: What do you mean?

Scully: It's obvious B.J. and Tillman are having an affair.

Mulder: How do you know?

Scully: A woman senses these things.

Mulder: Listen to this, Scully. "One must wonder how these monsters are created." Chaney wrote this. "Did their home life mold them into creatures that must maim and kill, or are they demons from birth?"

Scully: Well, that's poetic but it doesn't help us much. What did he say about the 1942 homicides?

Mulder: Well, the press called the murderer "The Slash Killer." His three victims were all young women aged twenty-five to thirty. He disabled them with a blow to the head. He would carve the word "SISTER" on their chests and paint it on the wall with their blood.

Mulder: I've always figured that dreams are answers to questions we haven't figured out how to ask yet.

Mulder: [voiceover] The conquest of fear lies in the moment of its acceptance. And understanding what scares us most is that which is most familiar, most common place... It's been said that the fear of the unknown is an irrational response to the excesses of the imagination. But our fear of the everyday, of the lurking stranger, and the sound of foot-falls on the stairs, the fear of violent death and the primitive impulse to survive, are as frightening as any X-file, as real as the acceptance that it could happen to you.

Scully: I know these things. I'm conscious of them. I know the world is full of predators, just as it has always been. And I know it's my job to protect people from them. And I've counted on that fact to give me faith in my ability to do what I do... I want that faith back... I need it back.

Scully: You think you find a way to deal with these things. In med school, you develop a clinical detachment to death. In your FBI training, you are confronted with cases, the most terrible and violent cases. You think you can look into the face of pure evil. And then you find yourself paralyzed by it.

Scully: [voiceover] Death is a recorded event. For reasons natural or unnatural, when a body ceases to function, the cause of the effect can be clearly reconstructed. A body has a story to tell... If the victim was strangled, an examination of the veins in the eyes will reveal this. If the victim was shot, entry wounds and gunpowder residue can be used to reconstruct the events leading to death and help to establish a possible motive. Body temperature, preferably the temperature of the spleen, is an accurate indicator of the time of death. As are rigor, livor and levels of sodium in the blood. If the body was moved, sand, small rocks, vegetable debris, even pollen can be removed and analysed to determine the location of the original crime scene and place the position of the body at the time of death. Extracutenous stains and residues can indicate the use of poison or toxins. Hair and fibres, slivers of glass, plastic, even insect casings can serve to recreate the circumstances under which death occurred... It may be an irony only understood by those of us who conduct these examinations, who use these pieces to rebuild a narrative, that death, like life itself, is a drama with a beginning, middle and end.

Scully: [voiceover] A complete model or psychological profile of the death fetishist does not exist. Extrapolating from material on file at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, the compulsion is the result of a complex misplacement of values and a deviation from cultural norms and societal mores - often accompanied by extreme alienation from normal social interaction and traditional avenues for interaction with others. He is more likely to be white, male and of average to above average intelligence. Cases of fetishists with IQs over 150 have been documented. The progression of the pathology can be traced from the fantasy stage to the eventual acting out of fetishistic impulses, including opportunistic homicide.... Agent Mulder believes strongly that the suspect in this case is escalating toward this action. It is my opinion from reading these case files that death fetishism may play a stronger role than suspected in cases of serial murder. That once he begins to murder, it is the killing that draws attention away from a deeper motive. A motive which most people, including law enforcement professionals, dare not imagine. It is somehow easier to believe, as Agent Bocks does, in aliens and UFOs, than in the kind of cold-blooded inhuman monster who could prey on the living to scavenge from the dead.

Ausbury: My religion, my family, Agent Mulder, goes back in this town seven generations. They fled persecution from people being persecuted, all in the name of religion. I was raised to believe Christianity was synonymous with hypocrisy. Man's natural tendency was to do as thou wilst, not do unto others. We believe... Man is nothing but an animal, no better, no worse, than those who walk on four legs. And though I believed our faith kept us powerful in the community, wealthy, good health, I... I came to see hypocrisy in the others...in myself.

Mulder: Private John McAlpin, he was one of the few, the proud... the dead. Last week he wrapped his car around a tree, died on impact.

Scully: Mulder, voodoo only works by instilling fear among its believers. You saw the way Bauvais tried to intimidate me. The power of suggestion is considerable, I'll admit.. But this is no more magic than a pair of fuzzy dice.

Mulder: I was surprised to get your card. I had assumed our last contact... would be our last. Why are you here?

Mulder: I have lived with a fragile faith built on the ether of vague memories from an experience that I can neither prove nor explain. When I was twelve, my sister was taken from me, taken from our home by a force that I came to believe was extraterrestrial. What happened to me out on the ice has justified every belief. If I should die now, it would be with the certainty that my faith has been righteous. And if, through death, larger mysteries are revealed, I will have already learned the answer to the question that has driven me here... that there is intelligent life in the universe other than our own... that they are here among us... and that they have begun to colonize.

Scully: Our friend from the CIA is about as unbelievable as his story... as is everything about this case. I mean, whatever happened to "trust no one", Mulder?

Scully: [voiceover] Transfusions and a treatment with antiviral agents have resulted in a steady but gradual improvement in Agent Mulder's condition. Blood tests have confirmed his exposure to the still-unidentified retrovirus, whose origin remains a mystery. The search team that found Agent Mulder has located neither the missing submarine nor the man he was looking for. Several aspects of this case remain unexplained, suggesting the possibility of paranormal phenomena. But I am convinced that to accept such conclusions is to abandon all hope of understanding the scientific events behind them. Many of the things I have seen have challenged my faith and my belief in an ordered universe, but this uncertainty has only strengthened my need to know, to understand, to apply reason to those things that seem to defy it. It was science that isolated the retrovirus Agent Mulder was exposed to, and science that allowed us to understand its behavior. And ultimately, it was science that saved Agent Mulder's life.

Mulder: I'd be willing to admit the possibility of a tornado, but it's not really tornado season. I'd even be willing to entertain the notion of a black hole passing over the area or some cosmic anomaly but it's not really black hole season either . . . If I were a betting man, I'd say it was . . .

Scully: Yeah I saw somebody, but whether it was actually the Lieutenant...

Mulder: What do you mean?

Scully: He looked about 90 years old. Off by about half a century. You don't seem too surprised.

Mulder: Scully, what do you know about the Philadelphia Experiment?

Scully: It was a program during World War II, to render battleships invisible to radar.

Mulder: On July 8, 1944, the USS Eldridge did more than just hide from radar screens. It vanished from the Philadelphia Navy Yard... Only to reappear minutes later, hundred of miles away in Norfolk, Virgina.

Scully: I found a children's book of Norse legends. From what I can tell, the pictures show the end of the world - not in a sudden firestorm of damnation as the Bible teaches us, but in a slow covering blanket of snow. First the moon and the stars will be lost in a dense white fog, then the rivers and the lakes and the sea will freeze over. And finally a wolf named Skoll will open his jaws and eat the sun, sending the world into an everlasting night. I think I hear the wolf at the door.

Scully: Mulder...When they found me, after the doctors and even my family had given up, I experienced something that I never told you about. Even now it's hard to find the words. But there's one thing I'm certain of. As certain as I am of this life, we have nothing to fear when it's over.

Mulder: I always thought when I got older I'd maybe take a cruise somewhere. This isn't exactly what I had in mind. The service on this ship is terrible, Scully.

Mulder: I could be mistaken. Maybe it was another bald-headed, jigsaw-puzzle-tattooed, naked guy I saw.

Hepcat Helm: Who are the rubes?

Sheriff Hamilton: These are FBI agents Scully and Mulder. This is Hepcat Helm, he operates a carnival funhouse.

Hepcat Helm: Oh man, how many times have I told you not to call it that. It's not some rinky dink carny ride. People go through it, they don't have fun, they get the hell scared out of them. It's not a funhouse, it's a tabernacle of terror.

Sheriff Hamilton: It's a funhouse.

Mulder: Tell me, have you done much circus work in your life?

Mr. Nut: And what makes you think I've ever spectated a circus? Much less been enslaved by one?

Mulder: I know that many of the citizens here are former circus hands, and I just thought that...

Mr. Nut: You thought that because I am a person of short stature, that the only career I could procure for myself would be one confined to the so-called 'Big Top'. You took one quick look at me, and decided that you could deduce my entire life. Never would it have occurred to you that a person of my height could have possibly obtained a degree in Hotel Management.

Mulder: I'm sorry. I meant no offence.

Mr. Nut: Well then why should I take offence? Just because it's human nature to make instantaneous judgements of others based solely upon their physical appearances? Why I've done the same thing to you, for example. I've taken in your all-American features, your dour demeanour, your unimaginative necktie design, and concluded that you work for the government; an FBI agent... but do you see the tragedy here? I have mistakenly deduced you to a stereotype. A caricature, instead of regarding you as a specific, unique individual.

Mulder: But I am an FBI agent.

Lanny: Mr. Nut, the kind-hearted manager here, convinced me that to make a living by publicly displaying my deformity lacked dignity. So... now I carry other people's luggage. I believe these are your trailers; if they are not... then I am wrong.

[Mulder takes the suitcases from Lenny and tips him]

Lanny: Oh, that's most considerate. Thank you very much.

[Mulder shows Scully that he still has the tip in his hand]

Lanny: Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite. No, no, that's... that's not what I meant... I... I didn't mean to imply that we had bedbugs... I... I meant to say don't let... don't let the...

Mulder: The 'Fiji Mermaids' bite?

Lanny: Yes, that's right... The 'Fiji Mermaids'...

[Mulder and Scully watch as Dr. Blockhead hammers a long nail up his nose]

Mulder: Have you ever performed this... act on anyone else?

Dr. Blockhead: What, are you sick? I tell my audiences that if they're stupid enough to try this on themselves they'll end up with a slight lobotomy. I am a professional.

Albert Hosteen:[Intro narration] There is an ancient Indian saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.

Deep Throat:[standing over an unconscious Mulder] I was first struck by the absence of time, having depended on it so completely as a measure of myself and my life. Moving backwards into the perpetual night - it consumes purpose, indeed, all passion and will. I come to you, old friend, with the dull clarity of the dead, not to beckon, you but to feel the fire and intensity that still live in you... and the heavy weight of your burdens which I had once borne. There is truth you know, friend, if that's all you seek, but there's no justice or judgment, without which truth is a vast... dead... hollow. Go back. Do not look into the abyss or let the abyss look into you; awaken the sleep of reason and fight the monsters within and without.

Frohike: He was a good friend. A redwood among mere sprouts. I guess this means he's passing you the torch?

Scully: Uh, I'm afraid not. I'm soon to be out of a job.

Frohike: Those sons of bitches! They're rigging the game.

Scully: And like rats they just scatter back into the wood pile.

Frohike: The rats that killed the cat.

Well Manicured Man: We predict the future. And the best way to predict it, is to invent it.

William Mulder: Hello, son. I did not dare hope to see you so soon, nor ever again hope to broker fate with a life to which I gave life. The lies I told you were a pox and poison to my soul, and now you are here because of them. Lies I thought might bury forever a truth I could not live with. I stand here ashamed of the choices I made so long ago when you were just a boy. You are the memory, Fox. It lives in you. If you were to die now, the truth will die. And only the lies survive us.

Scully: I went to your father's funeral. I told your mother that you were going to be okay.

Mulder: How did you know?

Scully: I just knew.

Scully: I need something to put my back up against, Mulder.

Mulder: I know. I feel the same way. I feel that we've lost so much... but we've got The X-Files, and I believe what we're looking for is in them. I'm more certain than ever the truth is out there, Scully.

Scully: I've heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.

The Cigarette Smoking Man: What is this?

Skinner: This is where you pucker up and kiss my ass!

The Cigarette Smoking Man: Listen -

Skinner: (Interrupting) Now, you listen to me, you son of a bitch! This man's name is Albert Hosteen. You should remember that. Because if Agents Mulder and Scully come down with so much as a case of the flu, Albert is prepared to recite, chapter and verse, file for file, everything on your precious tape.

The Cigarette Smoking Man: It's a nice try, Skinner.

Skinner: I'm sure you're thinking Albert is an old man and there are plenty of ways you might kill him too. Which is why, in the ancient oral tradition of his people, he's told twenty other men the information on those files. So unless you kill every Navajo living in four states... that information is available with a simple phone call. (Smirks) Welcome to the wonderful world of high technology

Mulder: Then if the future is written, then why bother to do anything?

Clyde Bruckman: Now you're catching on.

Clyde Bruckman: Well, you see, that's another reason I can't help you catch this guy. I might adversely affect the fate of the future. I mean, his next victim might be the mother of the daughter whose son invents the time machine. Then the son goes back in time and changes world history and then Columbus never discovers America, man never lands on the moon, the U.S. never invades Grenada. Or something less significant, resulting in the fact that my father never meets my mother and consequently, I'm never born.

Clyde Bruckman: You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation.

Scully: I guess this begs the question; if this is an alien autopsy...

Mulder: - where's the alien. But what so intriguing to me is the striking lack of detail here.

Scully: Well, what do you expect for $29.95?

Scully: I went to go see those MUFON members to find out about that woman, Betsy Hagopian.

Mulder: And what did you find?

Scully: I found out that she's dying. Along with a lot of other women who claim to be dying too. All of them who say that they've had these implanted in them. It's the same thing that I had removed from my own neck.

Mulder: But you're fine aren't you, Scully?

Scully: Am I? I don't know, Mulder. They said that they know me. That they've seen me before. It was freaky. They know things about me, about my disappearance.

Mulder: That is disturbing. But I don't think you should freak out until we find out what this thing is.

Dr. Berenbaum:... but all the characteristics of a typical sighting are shared with nocturnal insects swarming through an electrical air field... the sudden appearance of a colored, glowing light hovering in the night sky, moving in a nonmechanical matter, possibly humming... creating interference with radio and television signals... then suddenly disappearing.

Mulder: Yeah. Both her parents were naturalists. Her theory is that UFOs are actually nocturnal insect swarms passing through electrical air fields.

Scully: Her name is Bambi?

Mulder: Yeah, I had a praying mantis epiphany and, as a result, I screamed. No, not... not a girlie scream, but the scream of someone being confronted by some before unknown monster that had no right existing on the same planet I inhabited. Did you ever notice how a praying mantis' head resembles an alien's head? I mean, the mysteries of the natural world were revealed to me that day, but instead of being astounded, I was... repulsed.

Scully: Mulder... are you sure it wasn't a girlie scream?

Scully: [Watching Dr. Berenbaum and Ivanov walking away] Well, think of it this way, Mulder. By the time there's another invasion of artificially-intelligent, dung-eating robotic probes from outer space, maybe their uber-children will have devised a way to save our planet.

Mulder: You know, I never thought I'd say this to you, Scully... but you smell bad.

Jose Chung: Still, as a storyteller, I'm fascinated how a person's sense of consciousness can be... so transformed by nothing more magical than listening to words. Mere words.

Harold Lamb: Oh, Chrissy, thank God you're all right.

Chrissy Giorgio: How dare you come here!

Harold Lamb: Chrissy, I did everything I could.

Chrissy Giorgio: Don't I know it, you bastard!

Harold Lamb: Chrissy! Don't you remember?

Mr. Giorgio: What the hell is going on up there?

Harold Lamb: Chrissy! I love you!

Man in black: No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus.

Roky Crikenson: Really?

Man in black: Even the former leader of your United States of America, James Earl Carter Jr., thought he saw a UFO once... But it's been proven he only saw the planet Venus.

Roky Crikenson: I'm a republican.

Man in black: Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus.

Roky Crikenson: I know... What I saw.

Man in black: Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception. Yet you somehow brazenly declare seeing is believing? Mister Crikenson, your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder, and I wouldn't flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone that you saw anything last night other than the planet Venus, because if you do, you're a dead man.

Roky Crikenson: You... can't threaten me.

Man in black: I just did.

Blaine:(about Scully and Mulder) One of them was disguised as a woman, but wasn't pulling it off. Like, her hair was red, but it was a little too red, y'know? And the other one, the tall, lanky one, his face was so blank and expressionless. He didn't even seem human. I think he was a mandroid.

Jose Chung: Aren't you nervous telling me all this? Receiving all those death threats?

Blaine: Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.

Jose Chung: And though we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways, on this planet we are all alone.

Scully: I called him Ahab and he called me Starbuck. So I named my dog Queequeg. It's funny, I just realized something.

Mulder: It's a bizarre name for a dog, huh?

Scully: No. How much you're like Ahab. You're so... consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be its inherent cruelties or its mysteries, that everything takes on a warped significance to your megalomaniacal cosmology.

Mulder: Don't lay this off on me, you sneaky son of a bitch, you pulled me into this situation because you didn't have the courage to reveal the truth yourself.

X: Feel better now?

Mulder: You're a coward! You work in the shadows, you feed me scraps of information, hoping that I can piece it together. You make me risk my life, you risk my partner's life and you never risk your own! [X turns and starts to leave, Mulder aims and cocks his gun at X] You're not walking away from this.

X: You're risking your life right now.. [X turns and looks at Mulder] You failed. This is your success? Killing me? The truth is... you need me, Agent Mulder.

Cigarette Smoking Man: I've known your mother since before you were born, Fox.

[CSM enters an isolation cell, Jeremiah Smith sits strapped in a chair, CSM lights up a cigarette and takes a seat in front of Jeremiah]

Cigarette Smoking Man: ..This becomes a responsibility - [sighs lightly] - The thing that I'm now called upon to put right and put down. Certainly you expected nothing less.

Jeremiah Smith: I'm not ashamed of my actions.

Cigarette Smoking Man: Ashamed? You're not allowed the luxury of human weakness and penitence. You're not allowed to put your indulgences ahead of the greater purpose.

Jeremiah Smith: I no longer believe in the greater purpose.

Cigarette Smoking Man: Then your fate is just.

Jeremiah Smith: My justice is not for you to mete out; You may have reason, you have no right. You have no means either.

Cigarette Smoking Man: [irritated] You presume to dictate duty to me? Have you any idea what the cost of your actions is? What their effect might be? Who are you to give them hope?

Jeremiah Smith: What do you give them?

Cigarette Smoking Man: We give them happiness, and they give us authority.

Jeremiah Smith: The authority to take away their freedom under the guise of democracy.

Cigarette Smoking Man: Men can never be free. Because they're weak, corrupt, worthless and restless.. The people believe in authority. They've grown tired of waiting for miracle and mystery. Science is their religion. No greater explanation exists for them. They must never believe any differently if the project is to go forward.

Jeremiah Smith: At what cost to them?

Cigarette Smoking Man: The question is irrelevant, and the outcome inevitable. The date is set.

Scully:(Listing the evidence she's found at the scene while Mulder plays with a baseball.) The angle of movement and deeper indentation on the right side of the mark suggest a left-handed individual. I've collected soil specimens and although numerous shoe impressions remain from the sandlot game, I think a couple of stone casts would prove invaluable to the investigation. (Pauses for response; he ignores her) Meanwhile, I've quit the FBI and have become a spokesperson for the ab-roller.

Mulder: Smell that. (Holds the baseball in front of her nose.) It's perfume. God this brings back a lot of memories of my sister... All-day pickup games out on the vineyard. Ride your bikes down to the beach, eat bologna sandwiches. Only place you had to be on time was home for dinner. Never had to lock your doors. No modems, no faxes, no cell phones.

Scully: Mulder, if you had to do without a cell phone for two minutes, you'd lapse into catatonic schizophrenia.

Mulder: Scully, you don't know me as well as you think you do. You know I'm a working man and I live in a big city, but if I had to settle down? Build a home? It'd be in a place like this.

Scully:(Discussing the murdered baby's long list of birth defects) Imagine all a woman's hopes and dreams for her child, and for Nature to turn so cruel... What must a woman go through?

Mulder: Apparently not much in this case, if she'd just throw it out with the trash.

Scully:(Sadly) I- I guess I was just projecting on myself.

Mulder: Why, is there a history of genetic abnormalities in your family?

Scully: No.

Mulder:(Grinning) Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic makeup and a really high tolerance for being second-guessed and start pumping out the little uber-Scullys.

Scully:(Smiles back) What about your family?

Mulder: Aside from the need for corrective lenses and the tendency to be abducted by extraterrestrials involved in an international governmental conspiracy, the Mulder family passes genetic muster.

Scully: We all have a natural instinct to propagate.

Mulder: Do we?

Mulder: Scully. (She stops walking and turns around. He smiles.) I never saw you as a mother before.

Mrs. Peacock: Right arm was torn off. Saw it sitting there across my dead husband's lap. Boys took me home... sewed me up just like the family learnt in the War of Northern Aggression. Whole time, felt the same as if been making breakfast...They're such good boys.

Scully: Mrs. Peacock, they murdered Sheriff Taylor and his wife. And Deputy Pastor.

Mrs. Peacock: I can tell you don't have no children. Maybe one day you'll learn... the pride... the love... when you know your boy will do anything for his mother.

Scully: I think the way it goes here is that Edmund is both the father and brother of the other two.

Mulder: Does that mean that when Edmund was a kid, he got to ground his brothers for playing with his things?

Melissa/Sarah: I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive, forevermore. (Revelations 1:18) ((Said in a whisper as Mulder and Scully look out over a misty field the woman claims her past life died in.))

Mulder: At times I almost dream I too have spent a life the sages' way, and tread once more familiar paths. Perchance I perished in an arrogant self-reliance an age ago. And in that act a prayer for one more chance went up so earnest, so... Instinct with better light let in by death that life was blotted out not so completely, but scattered, wrecks enough of it to remain dim memories, as now, when seems, once more, the goal in sight again. (Robert Browning, "Paracelsus") ((Mulder at both the beginning and end of the episode, as he looks at aged photographs in the field where he died in a past life, remembering that life.))

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you're stuck with this undefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while, there's a peanut butter cup, or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast, the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits, filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts, and if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you've got left is a... is an empty box... filled with useless, brown paper wrappers.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: They [the Buffalo Bills] will never win the Super Bowl as long as I'm alive.

Caller ID: Saddam Hussein Line 2.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: Call back.

Lone Gunman:(About Cigarette Smoking Man, as he listens over the wiretap.) He's the most dangerous man alive, not so much because he believes in his actions, but because he believes these actions are the only ones life allows him.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: I could kill you whenever I please. But not today.

Scully: For the first time, I feel time like a heart beat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in its passage. I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me, knowing that you will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other. That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you–that are you–is a comfort to me now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago, and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions. If not for which I might never have been so strong now as I cross to face you and look at you, incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you.

Mulder: I refuse to believe that.

Scully: For all the times that I've said that to you, I am as certain about this as you have ever been.

Skinner:(About Mulder's tiny office) At least he doesn't take an elevator up to get to work.

Scully:(looking through Max's trailer) I think you were actually kindred spirits in some deep, strange way.

Mulder: What do you mean?

Scully: Men with Spartan lives, simple in their creature comforts, and willing to allow for the complexity of their passions.

Mulder: More people are trying to get their hands on this than a Tickle-Me-Elmo doll.

Skinner: Is this man on the plane?

Mulder: I think he got the connecting flight.

Scully: I, uh... actually, I was thinking about the- this gift that you gave me for my birthday. (takes out the Apollo 11 pendant/keychain and looks at it) You never got to tell me why you gave it to me or what it means. But I think I know. I think that you appreciate that there are extraordinary men and women and extraordinary moments when history leaps forward on the backs of these individuals. That what can be imagined can be achieved. That you must dare to dream, but that there's no substitute for perseverance and hard work. And teamwork, because no one gets there alone. And while we commemorate the greatness of these events and the individuals who achieved them, we cannot forget the sacrifice of those who make these achievements and leaps possible.

[She pauses for a moment, as if considering. Scene cuts to the two of them drinking the last of the bottle of wine.]

Scully: So there we are, at 2 o'clock in the morning, me in my taffeta dress, and Marcus, wherever the hell he was, he was wearing a, uh, a tux. It had a... kelly green cumberbund on it. Anyway, so, I know that Marcus is thinking that it's now or never, and I'm thinking...

Eddie Van Blundht:(smiling) What are you thinking?

Scully: I'm thinking, "What is that siren I hear getting louder?"

Eddie Van Blundht: No way! Who called the cops?

Scully: Well it wasn't the cops, it was the fire department - my friend Silvia and her idiot prom date-

Eddie Van Blundht: Burwood?!

Scully: -had built this campfire that went totally out of control and so we all had to ride back on the, um... what do you call it, the, um- the pumper truck! ("Mulder" laughs) Marcus was the 12th grade love of my life. (Starts to take a sip of wine, then starts laughing) I can't believe I'm telling you this.

Eddie Van Blundht: I can't believe you haven't told me before.

Scully: Now I'm seeing a whole new side of you, Mulder.

Eddie Van Blundht:(hopeful) Is that a good thing?

Scully: I like it.

Eddie Van Blundht: Do you ever wish things were different?

Scully: What do you mean?

Eddie Van Blundht: The person you wanted to be when you grew up when you were in high school. How far off from that did you end up?

Scully: Career wise? Miles off target.

Eddie Van Blundht: No no, not just that. Do you ever wish... that you could go back and do it all differently?

Scully:(curious) Do you?

[Looks at her silently, scoots closer to her on the couch, then leans in close enough to kiss her. When he's about an inch from her lips, Scully closes her eyes, then the door is thrown open by the real Mulder. Scully makes a disgusted noise and pushes Van Blundht away; he sighs and turns back into himself. Scully looks horrified, he shrugs apologetically.]

Scully: I don't imagine you need to be told this, Mulder, but you're not a loser.

Scully: Although cleared of any wrongdoing in the deaths of Amy and David Cassandra, Agent Mulder still has no recollection of the events that lead to their deaths. His seizures have subsided, with no evidence of permanent cerebral damage, but I am concerned this experience will have a lasting effect. Agent Mulder undertook this treatment hoping to lay claim to his past, that by retrieving memories lost to him he might finally understand the path he's on. But if that knowledge remains elusive, and if it's only by knowing where he's been that he can hope to understand where he's going, then I fear Agent Mulder may lose his course. And the truths he's seeking from his childhood will continue to evade him, driving him more dangerously forward in impossible pursuit.

Scully: Four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned me to a project you all know as the X Files. As I am a medical doctor with a background in hard science, my job was to provide an analytical perspective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder, whose investigations into the paranormal were fueled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was 12. I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work. That it is my scientific opinion that he became over the course of these years a victim. A victim of his own false hopes and of his belief in the biggest of lies.

Scully: Mulder, everything this man [Kritschgau] described...you can't just guess at these details. I'm sorry, but the facts here completely overwhelm any argument against them!

Mulder: Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them!

Scully: Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe.

Mulder: After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's NOT true!

Scully: Because it's easier to believe the lie. Isn't it?

Scully: Early this morning, I got a call from the police asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment. The detective asked me...he needed me to identify a body...

Section Chief Blevins: Agent Scully...

Scully: Agent Mulder died... late last night... from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Mulder:(smiling) Because I knew you'd talk me out of it if you thought I'd made a mistake.

Cigarette Smoking Man: But I've come today not to ask, but to offer. To offer you the truths that you so desperately sought - about the project, about the men who conspired to protect it...

Mulder: I know the truth.

Cigarette Smoking Man: Do you?

Mulder: I spoke to one of your men.

Cigarette Smoking Man: How do you know he's not a liar?

Mulder: I've seen enough to know he's not a liar, yeah.

Cigarette Smoking Man: You've seen but scant pieces of the whole.

Mulder: What more can you show me?

Cigarette Smoking Man: This man you spoke to - Michael Kritschgau. He's deceived you with beautiful lies. He's told you that everything you ever believed about the existence of extraterrestrial life is untrue.

Mulder:(nods) What are you saying?

Cigarette Smoking Man: As I said, I'm offering you the chance to know the truth.

Mulder: In exchange for what?

Cigarette Smoking Man: Quit the FBI. Come work for me. You can make your problems go away.

Mulder:(pauses) No deal.

Cigarette Smoking Man:(smiles) After all I've given you?

Mulder:(in disbelief) What have- What have you given me? The claim of a cure for Scully? Is she cured? You show me my sister only to take her right back? You've given me nothing.

Cigarette Smoking Man: I intend to keep my promises. I just need something from you.

Mulder: You murdered my father. You killed Scully's sister. And if Scully dies, I will kill you. I don't care whose father you are, I will put you down.

Cigarette Smoking Man: Well you're certainly capable, so I've been told. I understand you have a hearing tomorrow, where you'll have to testify to these murderous impulses of yours. [Mulder walks away] When you reconsider, the offer still stands.

Mulder: Why is that? Because I don't think the way you think? Because I won't just sit passively back and watch the family tragedy unfold?

Bill Scully: You're the reason for it. And I've already lost one sister to this quest you're on. Now I'm losing another. Has it been worth it? To you, I mean. Have you found what you've been looking for?

Mulder: No.

Bill Scully: No. You know how that makes me feel?

Mulder: In a way, I think I do. I lost someone very close to me--I lost a sister...I lost my father--all because of this thing I'm looking for.

Bill Scully: This what? Little green aliens?

Mulder: Yeah. Little green aliens.

Bill Scully: You're one sorry son of a bitch. Not a whole lot more to say. (leaves)

Mulder: (after his phone rings) One sorry son of a bitch speaking.

Mulder: Four years ago, while working on an assignment outside the FBI mainstream I was paired with Special Agent Dana Scully who I believe was sent to spy on me. To debunk my investigations into the paranormal. That Agent Scully did not follow these orders is a testament to her integrity as an investigator, a scientist, and a human being. She has paid dearly for this integrity.

Mulder: AND a conspiracy intended to destroy the lives of those who would reveal its true purpose. To conduct experiments on unwitting victims to further a secret agenda for someone within the government operating at levels without restraint or responsibility, without morals or conscience. Men who pretend to honor as they deceive, the price of this betrayal the lives and reputations of those deceived. Agent Scully...is lying in a hospital bed right now, diagnosed with terminal cancer. A victim of these same tests, conducted without her knowledge or consent. By these same men, who as they try to cover their tracks, who suborne and persecute the same people they have used in their plot, I will NOW call by name.

Senior Agent: Agent Mulder did you, or did you not shoot the man found dead in your apartment?

Mulder: I will answer that question, Sir.

Section Chief Scott Blevins: Did you shoot Scott Ostlehoff? Employee of the Department of Defense?

Mulder: I will answer that question, Sir.

Senior Agent: Answer the question asked, Agent Mulder!

Mulder: I will answer the question after I name the man!

Section Chief Scott Blevins: AGENT MULDER!

Mulder:I will answer that question after I name the man who's responsible for Agent Scully! The same man who directed that my apartment be surveilled by the DoD. A man I want to see prosecuted for his crimes! Who's sitting in this very room as I speak!

Senior Agent: Agent Mulder, the Section Chief has asked you a question you are going to answer!

Mulder: I can't do that, sir!

Senior Agent: You can and you will!

Mulder: I can't do that, sir...because the Section Chief is the man I'm about to name!

[Mulder is sitting on a chair in the hospital. Skinner approaches and sits next to him.]

Skinner: The Smoking Man's dead.

Mulder: How?

Skinner: Shot through his window. [Hands Mulder a photo of young Mulder and Samantha] Forensics found it at the scene. We're assuming it's his blood.

Mulder: Assuming?

Skinner: Well no body was found, though there was too much blood lost for anyone to have survived. (sighs) This afternoon when you named Blevins... how did you know?

Mulder: I didn't. I just guessed.

Skinner: Well it was a hell of a guess. Blevins had been on payroll for four years to a biotechnology company called Roush, which is somehow connected to all this.

Mulder: Yeah, she's in there with her family right now, but I'm sure she'd love to see you.

[Skinner heads in to her room, where Scully and her family are waiting. She smiles at him. He enters and shuts the door; Mulder sits outside staring at the picture of himself and Samantha and begins to cry.]

Scully: You know, Mulder, sometimes I think some work on your communication skills wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Mulder: I'll be back soon, and we can build a tower of furniture. (grins) Okay?

[Scully shakes her head, smiles and drinks her wine]

Mulder:(about whatever monster is lurking in the forest) Maybe it can regulate its temperature. You don't know of any animal that can?

Scully: Ticks. I've heard they can halt their metabolism for up to 18 years, essentially going in to suspended animation until something warm-blooded comes along.

Mulder: That's interesting.

Scully: Why is that interesting?

Mulder: Thirty years ago, the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was terrorized for over a year by something. Killing livestock, terrorizing the people. Witnesses described them as primitive-looking men with red, piercing eyes. Became known as the "Moth Men." I've got an X-File dating back to 1952 on it.

Scully:(dryly) What would that be filed next to? "The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati?"

Mulder: No, "The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati" is in the "C"s. Moth Men's over in the "M"s.

Scully:(trying to start a fire with stones) You were an Indian guide. Help me out here.

Mulder:(leaning against a log, as he's been injured) Indian guide says maybe you should run to the store and get some matches.

Scully: I would, but I left my wallet in the car. [Sits next to him, gets out her gun]

Mulder: What are you doing?

Scully: Trying to open my gun. [Takes the clip out] If I can separate the shell from the casing, maybe I can get the powder to ignite.

Mulder: Mm. And maybe it'll start raining weenies and marshmallows.

Scully: Do I detect a hint of negativity?

Mulder: No! Yes, actually. Yeah.

Scully: Mulder, you need to keep warm. Your body's still in shock.

Mulder: I was told once that the best way to regenerate body heat is to crawl naked into a sleeping bag with somebody else who was already naked. (scoots closer to her)

Scully:(grinning) Maybe if it rained sleeping bags, you'll get lucky. [Mulder looks up at Scully in surprise; she continues working on getting the bullet apart.] You ever thought seriously about dying?

Mulder: Yeah, once, when I was at the Ice Capades.

Scully:[Gives him a look, then goes back to the bullet.] When I was fighting my cancer, I was angry at the injustice of it, and its meaninglessness. Then I realized that that was a struggle - to give it meaning, to make sense of it. It's like life.

Mulder: I think nature is supremely indifferent to whether we live or die. I mean, if you're lucky, you get 75 years, if you're really lucky you get 80 years, and if you're extraordinarily lucky, you get to live 50 of those years with a decent head of hair.

Scully: So is perjury. So is calling out FBI. agents under false pretenses.

Mulder: For the purpose of what?

Scully: Isn't it obvious? I think what we're seeing here is an example of a culture for whom daytime talk shows and tabloid headlines have become a reality against which they measure their lives. A culture so obsessed by the media and a chance for self-dramatization that they'll do anything in order to gain a spotlight.

Mulder: I am alarmed that you would reduce these people to a cultural stereotype. Not everybody's dream is to get on Jerry Springer.

Scully: Psychologists often speak of the denial of an unthinkable evil or a misplacement of shared fears, anxieties taking the form of a hideous monster for whom the most horrific human attributes can be ascribed. What we can't possibly imagine ourselves capable of we can blame of the ogre, on the hunchback, on the lowly half-breed. Common sense alone will tell you that these legends, these unverified rumors, are ridiculous.

Mulder: But nonetheless, unverifiable and, therefore, true in the sense that they're believed to be true.

Scully: It begins where it ends...in nothingness. A nightmare born from deepest fears, coming to me unguarded...whispering images unlocked from time and distance. A soul unbound - touched by others but never held. On a course charted by some unseen hand. The journey ahead promising no more than my past reflecting back upon me. Until at last, I reach the end, facing a truth I can no longer deny. Alone, as ever.

Scully: Who is the man who would create a life whose only hope is to die?

Mulder: I don't know.. But that you found her, and you had a chance to love her - Maybe she was meant for that, too.

Scully: Like evidence of conjury or the black arts or shamanism, divination, Wicca or any kind of pagan or neo-pagan practice. Charms, cards, familiars, bloodstones, or hex signs or any of the ritual tableaux associated with the occult, Santeria, Voudoun, Macumba, or any high or low magic?

Mulder:[moves the lips on the boy he just staked to reveal vampire fangs] Look at that! Eh? [Scully taps the fangs to show that they're just plastic. Mulder looks horrified.] Oh sh- [Credits roll.]

Scully: Skinner wants a report in one hour. What are you going to tell him?

Mulder: What do you mean what am I gonna tell him? I'm gonna tell him exactly what I saw. What are you gonna tell him?

Scully: I'll tell him exactly what I saw.

Mulder: Now, how is that different? Look, Scully, I'm the one who may wind up going to prison here. I gotta know if you're gonna back me up or what.

Scully: (annoyed) First of all, if the family of Ronnie Strickland does indeed decide to sue the FBI for, I think the figure is $446 million, then you and I both will most certainly be co-defendants. And second of all... I don't even have a second of all, Mulder! 446 million dollars! I'm in this as deep as you are, and I'm not even the one that overreacted! I didn't do the [stabbing motion] with the thing!

Mulder: Yee-haw! Actually a town called Cheney, about 50 miles south of there. Population: 361. By all accounts, very rustic and charming. But as of late, ground zero, the locus for a series of mysterious nocturnal exsanguinations.

Scully: Exsanguinations? Of whom?

Mulder: [Flashes a slide of a dead cow.] How does that grab ya?

Scully: It's a-

Mulder: Dead cow! Exactly. Or more specifically, a dead 900 pound Holstein. Its body completely drained of blood, as was this one, (flashes slides) this one, this one, this one, and so on. Six, all in all, approximately one a week over the past six weeks.

Scully: Is there any sign of-

Mulder: Two small puncture wounds on the neck?

Scully: That's not what I was gonna ask.

Mulder: (excitedly) Too bad! We got em! Check it out. (flashes slide)

Scully: Well, these may be syringe marks, their placement meant to emulate fangs. Such ritualistic bloodletting points towards cultists of some sort, in which case- what?

Mulder:(disbelief) Dana?! [Cuts back to Mulder's office; he laughs] He never even knew your first name!

Scully: (embarrassed) You gonna interrupt me, or what?

Mulder: No, go ahead. (grinning) Dana.

Mulder:[Investigating a body] Have you noticed that this man's shoes are untied?

Scully: Mulder, what's your point?

Mulder: This means something... Sheriff, do you have an old cemetery in town, off the beaten path, the creepier the better?

Sheriff Lucius Hartwell: Uh, yeah.

Mulder:(snaps his fingers at him) Take me there now! Scully, we're gonna need a complete autopsy on this man, the sooner the better.

Scully: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! What am I even looking for?

Mulder:(puts his hands on her shoulders; looks at her intently) I don't know. (walks off)

Scully:(looks at the sheriff, who seems confused; tries to explain) He does that.

Scully:[speaking into a tape recorder] 4:54 p.m. begin autopsy on one white male, age 60, who is arguably having a worse time in Texas than I am...although not by much.

[She picks up the scalpel provided to her and the blade falls off]

Scully: Yee-haw.

Scully: But I just put money in the "magic fingers"!

Mulder:[hops on bed] I won't let it go to waste!

Mulder: Yesterday morning began like any other morning. You arrived at the office characteristically less than exuberant. [Cuts to Mulder putting plane tickets on the desk, speaking quietly and calmly] I hope you brought your cowboy boots.

Mulder: Well, here's something you may not know - shooting out the tires on a runaway RV is a lot harder than it looks. I then tried a different approach. [Cuts to Mulder being dragged behind the RV as he attempts to hold on to it, screaming loudly]

Mulder:(voiceover) Tired, frustrated, and lacking a solid lead, I just wanted to get cleaned up. I had the sheriff drop me at the motel, which is where I ran into you.

Scully:(sitting on the vibrating bed, yelling at Mulder) What do you mean you want me to do another autopsy?! Why do I have to do it now?! I just spent hours on my feet doing an autopsy, all for you! I do it all for you, Mulder! You know I haven't eaten since 6 o'clock this morning, and that was half a cream cheese bagel. And it wasn't even real cream cheese, it was light cream cheese! Now you want me to run off and do another autopsy?! (finally notices how beaten up he looks) What the hell happened to you?

Mulder:(voiceover) Finally you left.

Scully:(leaving the motel room) Don't you touch that bed!

[Mulder throws his sunflower seeds at Ronnie, which forces him to pick them up] Oh man! What'd you have to go and do that for?! You are in big trouble.

(Scully finds Mulder barely conscious in their hotel room)

Mulder: Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft!

(outside Skinner's office, as he reacts to Scully's version of the story)

Mulder: I did not!

Scully: You're saying that I actually hit him two times.

Mulder: Square in the chest. No effect.

Scully: ...and then he sort of flew at me like a flying squirrel.

Mulder: I don't think I'd use the phrase "flying squirrel" when I talk to Skinner, but... yeah, that's what happened.

Coroner: Probable cause of death... [looking at Ronnie Strickland's body with a stake through the heart] Gee, that's a tough one.

[Mulder and Scully are awaiting outside Skinner's office]

Scully: Mulder, please just keep reminding him you were drugged.

Mulder: Would you stop that?

Scully: It wouldn't hurt.

Mulder: Stop it.

[Skinner sticks his head out of his office]

Skinner: Scully, Mulder-

[Mulder jumps to his feet]

Mulder: I was drugged!

Walter Skinner: Ronnie Strickland's body has gone missing from the morgue; in conjunction with this the coroner's been attacked. His throat was bitten.

Scully: Mulder, he had fake fangs. Why would a real vampire need fake fangs? I mean, for the sake of argument?

Mulder: Fangs are very rarely mentioned in the literature; they're more or less an invention of Bram Stoker's. I think you were right before when you said this was about a guy who's watched too many Dracula movies. It's just that he happens to be a real vampire.

Mulder:(to the sheriff) You can stay behind here with Agent Scully and keep an eye on things where I go check something out. (to Scully, with a bad southern accent) Don't say I never did nothin' for ye!

Sheriff Lucius Hartwell: He's just not who we are anymore. I mean we pay taxes, we're good neighbors. Old Ronnie... he just can't seem to grasp the concept of low profile. But, though he may be a moron, he is one of our own.

Skinner: So that's it. They simply disappeared without a trace. And that's exactly what happened from start to finish.

Scully: Well I can neither confirm nor deny Agent Mulder's version of events which occurred outside my presence.

Mulder: And I can neither confirm nor deny Agent Scully's version of events, but, uh...

Mulder: Before the exploration of space, of the moon and the planets, man held that the heavens were the home and province of powerful gods, who controlled not just the vast firmament but the earthly fate of man himself, and that the pantheon of powerful warring deities was the cause and reason for the human condition, for the past and future, and for which great monuments would be created, on earth as in heaven. But in time man replaced these gods with new gods and new religions that provided no more certain or greater answers than those worshipped by his Greek or Roman or Egyptian ancestors. And while we've chosen now our monolithic and benevolent gods and found our certainties in science, believers all, we wait for a sign, a revelation. Our eyes turn skyward, ready to accept the truly incredible, to find our destiny written in the stars. But how do we best look to see? With new eyes or old?

Werber: The regression hypnosis work I did with you-

Mulder: No, I'm not questioning your methods, Dr Werber. I'm questioning myself, and how I was tricked. How I was led to believe, through an elaborate staging of events, that my sister had been abducted.

Werber: A man with faith can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.

Mulder: I don't think you understand. There's just too much evidence that it's all been a lie. The conspiracy is not to hide the existence of extraterrestrials. It's to make people believe in it so completely that they question nothing.

Werber: So, you and I have been advocates of insanity all along? Is this the extreme possibility you believe in now?

Mulder: One more anal-probing gyro-pyro levitating ecoplasm alien anti-matter story and I'm going to take out my gun and shoot somebody.

[Scully throws a newspaper at Mulder.]

Scully: Shouldn't that be my picture next to the headline? [A picture of Mulder with the headline, "All this conjecture about little green men - false, dangerous, delusional."] Or is that just you having a little fun?

Mulder: Do I look like I'm having fun, Scully?

Scully: You look constipated, actually.

Mulder: That would make sense. I've had my head up my rear end for the last five years.

[Mulder stands next to Scully, who is laying on a bed in the hospital, and move a strand of her bangs out of her eyes. She begins to wake up.]

Scully: Mmm. [Opens her eyes.] What time is it?

Mulder:(laughing) "What time is it?" It's time to thank your lucky stars.

Scully: Why are you laughing?

Mulder: I'm not laughing at you! (smiles) I'm just very happy to be standing here talking to you, that's all.

Scully:(getting concerned) Mulder, what am I doing here?

Mulder: You were airlifted here in vasogenic shock.

Scully: From what?

Mulder: You've got some first-degree burns, and scorching on your hands and face.

Scully:(touches face, not understanding) From what?

Mulder: You don't remember?

Scully: Mulder... [Looks at the tv, which is showing a report about the attack, along with images of many of the dead bodies found at the scene.]

Mulder: Is any of this coming back to you?

Scully: I was there? [Mulder sighs.] Well, doing what?

Mulder: I was hoping you were going to answer that question for me.

Scully: But it doesn't explain why they would want to kill me. And it doesn't explain why I survived.

Mulder: It all comes down to a question, one that hasn't been answered or I don't think honestly addressed. Who made that chip in your neck? That chip was found in a military research facility. Our government made that chip, implanted it in your neck as part of a secret military project to develop a biochemical weapon, to monitor your immunity or to destroy you like a lab rat... if the truth were to be exposed. Your cancer, your cure. Everything that's happening to you now. It all points to that chip. The truth I've been searching for? That truth is IN you.

Scully:(pauses, looks down) Mulder, when I met you five years ago, you told me that your sister had been abducted... by aliens. That that event had marked you so deeply that nothing else mattered. I didn't believe you, but I followed you... on nothing more than your faith that the truth was out there, based not on facts, not on science, but on your memories that your sister had been taken from you. Your memories were all that you had.

Mulder: I don't trust those memories now.

Scully: Whether you trust them or not, they led you here, and me. But I have no memories to either trust or distrust. And if you ask me now to follow you again, to stand behind you in what you now believe, without knowing what happened to me out there... without those memories, I can't. I won't.

Mulder:[Stands and goes to window, pauses, then looks back at her.] If I could give you those memories, if I could prove that I was right and that what I believed for so long was wrong-

Scully: Is that what you really want?

[Scully is under hypnosis]

Scully: There's... there's another one. There's another ship. They see it. They were attacking them.

Krycek: You know, if it wasn't in my best interests, I would just as soon squeeze the trigger.

Mulder: What's stopping you?

Krycek: Hear this, agent Mulder. Listen very carefully, because what I'm telling you is deadly serious. There is a war raging, and unless you pull your head out of the sand, you and I and about 5 billion other people are gonna go the way of the dinosaur. I'm talking planned invasion- the colonization of this planet by an extraterrestrial race.

Mulder:(laughing) I thought you were serious.

Krycek: Kazakhstan, Skyland Mountain, the site in Pennsylvania, they're all alien lighthouses where the colonization wil be gin, but where now a battle is being raged, a struggle for heaven and earth where there is one law: fight or die. And one rule: resist or serve.

Mulder: Serve who?

Krycek: No, not who. What.

Mulder: Krycek, you're a murderer, a liar and a coward. Just because you stick a gun in my chest, I'm supposed to believe you're my friend?!

Krycek:(smiles) Get up. I was sent by a man... a man who knows, as I do, that resistance is in our grasp, and in yours. The mass incinerations were strikes by an alien rebellion, to upset plans for occupation. One of these rebels is being held captive. And if he dies, so does the resistance. [Leans forward and seems to kiss him on the cheek?, then puts his gun away and starts to leave.](in Russian)Good luck to you, my friend.

Scully: Mulder? What are you doing sitting here in the dark?

Mulder: Thinking.

Scully: Thinking about what?

Mulder: Well, the usual. Destiny, fate, how to throw a curveball. The inextricable relationships in our lives that are neither accidental nor... somehow in our control either.

Mulder: And why would God allow this to happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? Religion has masqueraded as the paranormal since the dawn of time to justify some of the most horrible acts in history.

Scully: I was raised to believe that God has His reasons however mysterious.

Mulder: He may well have His reasons, but He seems to use a lot of psychotics to carry out His job orders.

Mulder:[Speaking to Father Gregory who is praying inside an interrogation room] What are you asking for, Father? Mercy or forgiveness? You know... they say when you talk to God it's prayer, but when God talks to you it's schizophrenia. What is your God telling you, Father?

AD Maslin: Agent Mulder... Agent Mulder, I'm reading here a very pie-in-the-sky report about global domination plans by vicious, long-clawed spacelings? Is there going to be data to back this vague, omnibus account?

Mulder: Yes.

AD #1: I see your renowned arrogance has been left quite intact.

Cigarette Smoking Man: There was some sloppiness in Phoenix where they found the body. The local PD got involved. These were taken at the scene by a crime reporter.

First Elder: These were run in the press?

Cigarette Smoking Man: I trumped up a story about a crazy Indian on the loose. Never underestimate the public's willingness to blame the Red Man for... anything they can't explain.

Scully: Mulder, I just want to remind you that by not informing local PD we are in technical violation of state laws prohibiting contamination of a crime scene. (Mulder pays no attention to her; mutters) Why do I bother?

Mulder: What does it take? For this thing to come up and bite you on the ass? I saw these creatures. I saw them burst to life. You would've seen them, too but you were infected with that virus. You were passed out over my shoulder.

Scully: Mulder, I know what you did. I know what happened to me but without ignoring the science, I can't... Listen, Mulder... (takes his hand) You told me that my science kept you honest. That it made you question your assumptions. That by it, I'd made you a whole person. If I change now... It wouldn't be right... or honest.

Mulder: I'm talking about extraterrestrial life alive on this planet in our lifetime. Forces that dwarf and precede all human history. I'm sorry, Scully, but this time your science is wrong. (walks away)

Mulder: Why are you here?

Gibson: They were using me 'cause I can communicate with it.

Scully: Communicate with what?

Gibson: You already know. You just don't want to believe it.

[Mulder and Scully glance at each other]

Spender: You're not supposed to come here. It's what was agreed to. It's the deal you made.

Cigarette Smoking Man: I had to congratulate you. Commend how you handled things. How you handled Mulder.

Spender: I did what I was asked.

Cigarette Smoking Man: You did well, son. He's on very thin ice now, you know?

Spender: Mulder will be back. As long as he lives, he won't give up.

Cigarette Smoking Man: Well, there's solutions, of course. Simple but extreme solutions. I've used these methods. They have their place. But not here.

Spender:(surprised) You've killed men?

Cigarette Smoking Man: You can kill a man but you can't kill what he stands for... Not unless you first break his spirit. That's a beautiful thing to see.

Mulder: It would help if you'd shut the door. It would make it harder for them to see that I'm totally disregarding everything I was told.

Scully:(closing the door) Everything we were told, Mulder.

Mulder: They can't take away the X-Files, Scully. They tried.

Scully: You know, Agent Fowley's report to OPR painted the facts in an interesting way. I hope you haven't been betrayed.

Mulder: (not looking at her) Agent Fowley's report was a means to an end. Trying to protect the work. Protect the X-Files.

Scully: Mulder, Agent Fowley's report states that the man you saw attacked was bludgeoned by an unknown subject. She makes no mention of a little boy who as it happens, is nowhere to be found. It would seem that her report protects everything but you.

Mulder: Agent Fowley took me to that plant at great risk to herself where I saw something that you refuse to believe in. Saw it again, Scully. And though it may not say it in her report, Diana saw it, too. And no matter what you think she's certainly not going to go around saying that just because science can't prove it isn't true.

Scully: I don't doubt what you saw, Mulder. I don't doubt you. I'm willing to believe, but not in a lie and not in the opposite of what I can prove. It comes down to a matter of trust. [He looks up at her] I guess it always has.

Mulder: You asking me to make a choice?

Scully: I'm asking you to trust my judgment. To trust me. [Hands him a folder]

Mulder: I can't accept that. Not if it refutes what I know to be true.

Scully: Mulder, these are test results. DNA from the claw nail we found matching exactly the DNA from the virus you believe is extraterrestrial.

Mulder:[Takes the folder and looks at the papers inside] That's the connection.

Scully: Which matches exactly DNA that was found in Gibson Praise.

Mulder: Wait a minute. I don't understand. You're saying that Gibson Praise is infected with the virus?

Scully: No. It's a part of his DNA. In fact, it's a part of all of our DNA. It's called a genetic remnant. It's inactive junk DNA. Except in Gibson it's turned on.

Mulder: So if that were true, that would mean that Gibson is in some part extraterrestrial.

(Mulder, in dark sunglasses, leans against one of the porch supports very bored and petulant, eating sunflower seeds.)

Farmer: Jehovah's Witness?

Scully: No, sir. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mulder: But we do have a free copy of the Watchtower for you if you'd like.

Farmer: I figure I got better things to do with my fertilizer than going around blowing government buildings sky high.

Scully: Yeah. Well, as we said, sir this is just routine.

Mulder:(quietly to Scully) So routine, it numbs the mind.

Scully:(firmly) Mulder, we're not going to Nevada.

Mulder: Come on, Scully. Just one quick side trip.

Scully: No. Sorry, Mulder. We have a whole new assignment.

Mulder: Running down people that buy fertilizer? This is scut work, bozo work - the FBI equivalent of being made to wear an orange jumpsuit and pick up trash by the side of the highway. They mean to humiliate us.

Scully: Look, Mulder, like it or not, humiliated or not, we're on domestic terrorism now and, yes, this is... This is a punishment, but if we want to get back to where we want to be we have to follow orders. We can't freelance.

Mulder: You saw that news report. What did you make of that?

Scully: I think that the obvious assumption is that the woman was shot, regardless of what the police say. Maybe it was a sniper.

Mulder: In the words of their captain, "she just sort of popped." And what about this guy who supposedly tried to take her hostage, her husband? Looked to me like he was trying to warn the cops before she died. Now, the sun will rise in America tomorrow regardless of whether or not we're at yet another farm investigating yet another enormous pile of doo-doo. We can be in and out in a day. Nobody has to know.

[Scully seems to consider the idea. Mulder waggles his eyebrows at her.]

[Mulder stops the car at a stoplight; Crump screams.]

Crump: What are you doing?!

Mulder: What? What am I doing?

Crump: What the hell are you doing?!

Mulder:(sarcastically) I'm composing a sonnet. I'm slowing down for a light!

Mulder: Crump? Crump, what else can you tell me about what's happening to you?

Crump: Mr. Crump. You call me by my last name, you say "mister" in front of it.

Mulder: "Mister." I got you.

Crump: Not Crump. Mr. Crump.

Mulder: I can think of something else I'd like to call you. I could put "mister" in front of that, too if you'd like.

Crump: You know, what kind of name is Mulder, anyway? What is that, like... like, Jewish?

Mulder:(disbelieving) Excuse me?

Crump: Jewish... It is, right?

Mulder:(annoyed) It's Mr. Mulder to you, you peanut-picking bastard. Now, Mr. Crump what can you tell me about what's happening to you?

Mulder: On behalf of the International Jewish Conspiracy, I've got to inform you that we're almost out of gas.

Crump: Hey, uh... The Jew stuff? No offense. I mean, uh... A man can't help who he's born to.

Mulder:(sarcastic) That was an apology, right? Gee, I don't know if I can see to drive my eyes are tearing up so bad.

Scully: Lieutenant Breil? My name is Dana Scully. I called in regard to the electrical equipment the Navy is maintaining in the town of Montello.

Lieutenant Breil: Right. I don't know if there's been some miscommunication between you and your Washington office, but, uh...

Scully: My Washington office?

Lieutenant Breil: Yeah. I was under the impression that I'd explained this to the FCC's satisfaction.

Scully: Oh, I'm... I'm so sorry to make you run through it again, uh... For my official report to the, uh... To the FCC.

Mulder: Okay. So are we done here? Back to the bozo work investigating huge piles of manure?

AD Kersh: You can always quit.

[Mulder looks at Scully; leaves the office, slams door.]

Scully: Sir, Agent Mulder has been through a lot.

AD Kersh: And you apologize for him a lot. I've noticed that about you.

Scully: I'm not apologizing for this. Because of his work, the DOD is shutting down their antenna array in northeastern Nevada. Our participation in this case has saved lives.

AD Kersh: I don't see you proving that. The Department of Defense admits no culpability whatsoever. Furthermore, they say the closing of the facility was coincidental.

Scully:("yeah, right" tone) Right.

AD Kersh: Don't misunderstand me, Agent. I don't care if you and your partner saved a school bus full of doe-eyed urchins on their way to Sunday bible camp. You no longer investigate X-Files. You are done and the sooner you and Mulder come to recognize that, the better for both of you.

Skinner:(louder) I'm not allowed to have contact with you - any contact with either you or Mulder.

Skinner's secretary: She walked right past me, sir.

[Scully closes the door between the offices.]

Skinner: You're out of line, Scully.

Scully: No, sir, you're out of line. I'm sorry, but I'm coming to you for help and I've got nowhere else to go. I would hope that after everything that we have been through that you would at least have the courtesy and the decency and not to mention the respect to listen to what I have to say. Now, all I need is information. (Skinner takes note; glances at it.) You don't have to do anything else. Look, sir, if you know anybody at the Office of Naval Intelligence it would be of great help.

Skinner:(pauses; hands back the note) I could lose my job, my pension, I could even be subject to legal action.

Mulder: After Poland, Hitler's on his way to Denmark, Holland and France with a few stops in between. The French all but roll over on us, the Italians seize their opportunity and the Japanese come through the back door. It's a long, bloody story. It fortunately has a happy ending.

Sailor: We win?

Mulder: Yeah, you come out on the side of history with no small amount of help from us. Not much to apologize over the next 50 years except for maybe the Spice Girls.

Scully:(dryly) I'm all a-tingle. (they share a look) So, Mulder, this supposed clandestine source who's contacted you how do we know that he's not just another crackpot whose encyclopedic knowledge of extraterrestrial life isn't derived exclusively from reruns of Star Trek?

Scully: Mulder, it's the dim hope of finding that proof that's kept us in this car, or one very much like it for more nights than I care to remember. (Mulder looks at her fondly) Driving hundreds if not thousands of miles through neighborhoods and cities and towns where people are raising families and buying homes and playing with their kids and their dogs, and... in short, living their lives. While we - we - we just keep driving.

Mulder: What is your point?

Scully: Don't you ever just want to stop? Get out of the damn car? Settle down and live something approaching a normal life?

Mulder:(defensive) This is a normal life. [Scully smiles to herself.]

Mulder (as Morris): Okay, well, uh... Everybody have a, uh... a good day at your various, uh... (realizes no one is paying attention) All right. (Turns to leave.)

Chris: Mom!

Mrs Fletcher: Morris! What about Chris?

Mulder (as Morris): Chris?

Chris: You said you'd give me an answer today.

Mrs Fletcher: Her nose. You said you'd give her an answer about her nose.

[Family waits in anticipation. This is obviously a very important decision.]

Joanne Fletcher: It's just that you don't want to ever make love to me ever again, that's all. That and you mumble something about Scully in your sleep. Who is Scully, Morris? Is it another woman?

Mulder (as Morris): Does Scully sound like a woman's name to you?

Joanne Fletcher: Who is Scully? Tell me.

Mulder (as Morris): Oh, Joanne, I'm sure I've told you many times in the past that there are things about my work that unfortunately, I have to keep a secret.

Joanne Fletcher: Oh, no, buster. That's not going to fly this time.

Mulder (as Morris): My point is that there are a lot of things you don't know about me. And... I've just... I've been under a lot of pressure lately. I mean, up is down and black is white. I don't know where I stand anymore. I don't even know... who I am really anymore. I just... I know for sure that I am not the man you married. I'm just not. And I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry.

Joanne Fletcher: Oh, god, Morris. I didn't know. They have that pill now. (understanding laughter) We can work this out. There's other ways to be intimate.

Scully:(nervous) You're, uh... You're the man from the other night? From Area 51?

Joanne Fletcher:(yelling from inside the house) Liar!

Scully: You phoned me. Would you mind telling me what this is about?

Mulder (as Morris): I'm Mulder. I'm really Mulder. I switched bodies, places, identities with this man Morris Fletcher the man that you think is Mulder, but he's not. (sees his reflection in the car window - of Morris) Of course you don't believe me. Why was I expecting anything different? Your full name is Dana Katherine Scully. Your badge number is... Hell! I don't know your badge number. Your mother's name is Margaret. Your brother's name is Bill Jr. He's in the Navy and he hates me. (no response from Scully) Lately, for lunch, you've been having this six-ounce cup of yogurt, plain yogurt, into which you stir bee pollen because you're on a bee pollen kick even though I tell you you're a scientist and you should know better.

Joanne Fletcher:(opens the door and dumps all of Morris' black suits onto the front steps) Cheater!

Scully: Look... Any of that information could have been gathered by anyone.

Mulder (as Morris): Even that yogurt thing? That is so you. That is so Scully. Well, it's good to know you haven't changed. That's somewhat comforting.

Morris:(voiceover) Once upon a time, there was a guy with the improbable name of Fox Mulder. He started out life happily enough, as these things go. He had parents who loved him, a cute kid sister. He had a roof over his head, got all his flu shots, had all his fingers and toes and aside from being stuck with the name "Fox" which probably taught him how to fight - or not - he pretty much led a normal life. But the worst thing by far - the biggest kick in the slacks this kid Fox ever got - was what happened to his sister. One day, she just disappeared. Now, Fox buckled down and worked his butt off. Graduated top of his class at Oxford then top of his class at the FBI academy. None of that hard work made up for his sister, though. It was just a way of putting her out of his mind. Finally, the way I figure it, he went out of his mind and he's been that way ever since. Fox Mulder pissed away a brilliant career, lost the respect of supervisors and friends and now lives his life shaking his fist at the sky and muttering about conspiracies to anyone who will listen. If you ask me, he's one step away from pushing a baby carriage filled with tin cans down the street. But now, all that's going to change.

[Morris (as Mulder) enters with groceries; looks around the apartment.]

Morris (as Mulder): Uh-huh. (sets the bags down and gets out some candles) A little mood lighting for the bedroom. (looks around; pauses) No bedroom.

[Goes over to a closed door; tries to open it several times with no result; finally gets it open. Several boxes and porno magazines fall out; the room is shown to be filled with boxes, old furniture and papers.]

Joanne Morris: I've heard enough from you for one lifetime, Morris. Go tell it to that tramp of yours, that Scully, whatshername.

Mulder (as Morris): Dana Scully. Special Agent Dana Scully.

Joanne Morris: Special Tramp Dana Scully.

Mulder (as Morris): She's my partner, Joanne.

Joanne Morris: I'm supposed to be your partner.

Mulder (as Morris): My name is not Morris Fletcher. It's Fox Mulder. Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI. Dana Scully is my FBI partner. I am not your husband we are not married, we are complete strangers and I have a whole other life that I'm desperately trying to get back to.

Joanne Morris: You know, Morris, most men, when they have a mid-life crisis - they go out and buy themselves a sports car. They don't run around calling themselves Fox.

[Scully and Morris (as Mulder) pull up in their car next to Mulder (as Morris). Scully gets out to stand next to Mulder; Morris stays in the car.]

Scully:(hesitantly) That is you in there, Mulder, isn't it? (Mulder nods; Scully folds her arms, hugging herself) I, uh... I just got off the phone with Frohike. They were able to download and analyze the crash data and, yes, there was an anomalous event that night.

Mulder (as Morris): And how do I get back?

Scully:(not easy for her to say) Well, that's just it. It's all about random moments in time... About a series of variables approaching an event horizon. And even if we... could recreate that moment if we could sabotage another craft... Mulder, if we were... If we were off... If the event were off by even one millisecond...

Mulder (as Morris): I might wind up with my head in a rock.

Scully: Something like that, yeah. (long pause)

Mulder (as Morris):(depressed) What about him? I mean, me. Whatever. Whoever he is.

Scully: Agent Mulder has become AD Kersh's new golden boy. He's been tasked with returning the flight data recorder that he and I stole. The son of a bitch confesses to Kersh even more than I do to my priest. I'm just tagging along for the ride.

Mulder (as Morris): What do you mean, "just tagging along?"

Scully: I'm out of the Bureau. I've been censured and relieved of my position.

Mulder (as Morris): No. You can explain it to them like you explained it to me. You have the data. You can make them understand. You can get your job back.

Scully:(can't help but smile; looks up at him fondly) I'd kiss you if you weren't so damn ugly. (Mulder smiles back)

Morris (as Mulder):(honking the horn; yelling out the window) Take a picture - it'll last longer!

Scully: Neither, if I do it first. (Squeezes his arm, then walks toward the car. He stops her.)

Mulder (as Morris): Hey, Scully...

[He holds out his closed hand to her; she holds out her palm. He drops a handful of sunflower seeds into her hand; takes one back and eats it. They look at each other. Mulder watches, depressed, as Scully drives away.]

Mulder:(on phone) Mulder.

Scully:(on phone; in her office) Mulder, it's me. I just wanted to let you know that we slipped under Kersh's radar. Our little field trip to Nevada went unnoticed.

Scully: Check out lines were worse than rush hour on the 95. If I heard "Silent Night" one more time, I was going to start taking hostages.

Scully: Let's hear it. Give me the details.

Mulder: Look, if you've got Christmas stuff to do I don't want to... you know...

Scully: Mulder, I drove all the way out here. I might as well know why. Right?

Mulder: I just thought you'd be more... curious.

Scully: Who lives in the house?

Mulder: No one.

Scully: Then who are we staking out?

Mulder: The former occupants.

Scully: They've come back?

Mulder: That's the story.

Scully: I see. (dryly) The dark, gothic manor... the, uh, omnipresent low fog hugging the thicket of overgrowth... Wait- is that a hound I hear baying out on the moors?

Mulder: No. Actually that was a left cheek sneak.

Mulder:(mysteriously) Christmas, 1917. It was a time of dark, dark despair. American soldiers were dying at an ungodly rate in a war-torn Europe while at home, a deadly strain of the flu virus attacked young and old alike. Tragedy was a visitor on every doorstep while a creeping hopelessness set in with every man, woman and child. It was a time of dark, dark despair.

Scully:(unimpressed) You said that.

Mulder: But here at 1501 Larkspur Lane for a pair of star-crossed lovers tragedy came not from war or pestilence - not by the boot heel or the bombardier - but by their own innocent hand.

Scully: Go on.

Mulder: His name was Maurice. He was a... a brooding but heroic young man beloved of Lyda, a sublime beauty with a light that seemed to follow her wherever she went. They were likened to two angels descended from heaven whom the gods could not protect from the horrors being visited upon this cold, grey earth.

Scully: And what happened to them?

Mulder: Driven by a tragic fear of separation they forged a lovers' pact so that they might spend eternity together and not spend one precious Christmas apart.

Scully: They killed themselves?

Mulder: And their ghosts haunt this house every Christmas Eve. (Scully laughs) I just gave myself chills.

Scully: It's a good story, Mulder, and very well told, but I don't believe it.

[Mulder and Scully are searching a haunted house]

Scully: These are tricks that the mind plays. They are ingrained cliches from a thousand different horror films. When we hear a sound, we get a chill. We-we see a shadow and we allow ourselves to imagine something that an otherwise rational person would discount out of hand. The whole... the whole idea of a benevolent entity fits perfectly with what I'm saying. That a spirit would materialize or return for no other purpose than to show itself is silly and ridiculous. I mean, what it really shows is how silly and ridiculous we have become in believing such things. I mean, that... that we can ignore all natural laws about the corporeal body... that-that we witness these spirits clad in-in their own shabby outfits with the same old haircuts and hairstyles never aging, never... never in search of more comfortable surroundings-- it actually ends up saying more about the living than it does about the dead.

Mulder: Mm-hmm.

Scully: I mean, Mulder, it doesn't take an advanced degree in psychology to understand the... the unconscious yearnings that these imaginings satisfy. You know, the-the longing for immortality the hope that there is something beyond this mortal coil... that-that we might never be long without our loved ones. I mean, these are powerful, powerful desires. I mean, they're the very essence of what make us human. The very essence of Christmas, actually.

[A door slightly opens by itself]

Mulder: Tell me you're not afraid.

Scully: All right. I'm afraid... but it's an irrational fear.

[Mulder and Scully have just found a corpse.]

Scully: You know what's weird?

Mulder: What?

Scully: Mulder, she's wearing my outfit.

Mulder: How embarrassing.

Maurice: You drink? Take drugs?

Mulder: No.

Maurice: Get high?

Mulder: No.

Maurice: Are you overcome by the impulse to make everyone believe you? (Mulder looks surprised) I'm in the field of mental health. I specialize in disorders and manias related to pathological behavior as it pertains to the paranormal.

Mulder: Wow. I didn't know such a thing existed.

Maurice: My specialty is in what I call soul prospectors - a crossaxial classification I've codified by extensive interaction with visitors like yourself. I've found you all tend to fall into pretty much the same category.

Mulder: And what category is that?

Maurice: Narcissistic, overzealous, self-righteous egomaniac.

Mulder: That's a category?

Maurice: You kindly think of yourself as single-minded but you're prone to obsessive compulsiveness, workaholism, antisocialism... Fertile fields for the descent into total wacko breakdown.

Mulder: I don't think that pegs me exactly.

Maurice: Oh, really? Waving a gun around my house? Huh? Raving like a lunatic about some imaginary brick wall? (Mulder looks over at the brick wall in the doorway) You've probably convinced yourself you've seen aliens. You know why you think you see the things you do?

Mulder:(like it's obvious) Because I have seen them?

Maurice: 'Cause you're a lonely man. A lonely man chasing paramasturbatory illusions that you believe will give your life meaning and significance and which your pathetic social maladjustment makes impossible for you to find elsewhere. You probably consider yourself passionate, serious, misunderstood. Am I right?

Mulder: "Paramasturbatory"?

Maurice: Most people would rather stick their fingers in a wall socket than spend a minute with you.

Mulder: All right, now just, uh... Just back off for a second.

Maurice: Spend every Christmas this way? Alone?

Mulder:(confident) I'm not alone.

Maurice: More self-delusion.

Mulder: No, I came here with my partner. She's somewhere in the house.

Maurice: Behind a brick wall? (Mulder smiles and nods) How'd you get her to come with you? Steal her car keys? (Mulder's smile fades) You know why you do it - listen endlessly to her droning rationalizations. 'Cause you're afraid. Afraid of the loneliness. Am I right?

Mulder: I'd just like to find my partner.

Lyda: I think maybe the ghosts have been playing tricks on you.

Scully: I don't believe in ghosts.

Lyda: Then what are you doing here?

Scully: It's my partner.

Lyda: He believes in ghosts?

Scully: Yeah.

Lyda: Oh, you poor child. You must have an awful small life. Spending your Christmas Eve with him... Running around chasing things you don't even believe in.

Scully: Don't come any closer.

Lyda:(coming closer) I can see it in your face... The fear... The conflicted yearnings... A subconscious desire to find fulfillment through another. Intimacy through co-dependency.

Scully: What?

Lyda: Maybe you repress the truth about why you're really here pretending it's out of duty or loyalty-- unable to admit your dirty little secret. Your only joy in life is proving him wrong.

Scully: You don't know me.

Lyda: I hope you're not expecting any great advantages to all this.

Mulder: To all what?

Lyda: I'm assuming you came here with similar misconceptions.

Mulder: We came here looking for you.

Lyda: Oh, yeah? You didn't come here to be together for eternity?

Mulder:(chuckling) No.

Lyda: Because you're filled with despair and woeful Christmas melancholy?

Mulder: Why?

Lyda:(sighing) Maybe it was your partner then.

Mulder:(folding his arms) What about her?

Lyda: You knew this house was haunted.

Mulder: Yeah.

Lyda: Maybe you two should have discussed your real feelings before you came out here. I'm speaking from experience.

Lyda: I don't show my hole to just anyone.

Mulder:(grimaces, looks away) Why are you showing it to me?

Lyda: The bodies under the floor - maybe that was just some kind of Jungian symbolism. Or maybe... there's a secret lovers' pact.

Mulder:(sighs; smiles) We're not lovers.

Lyda: And this isn't a pure science. But you're both so attractive and there'll be a lot of time to work that out.

[Mulder is still dressed, watching TV through the night; there's a knock at the door; he opens it to show Scully, also still dressed.]

Scully: I, uh... I couldn't sleep. I was, um... (sighs)

Mulder:(puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her in to the apartment) Come in. Aren't you supposed to be opening Christmas gifts with your family?

Scully: Mulder... None of that really happened out there tonight... That was all in our heads, right?

Mulder:(they look at each other for a moment) Now, um... I know we said that we weren't going to exchange gifts but, uh... I got you a little something. (holds out a present to her - the only wrapped gift shown in the apartment the whole episode)

Scully: Mulder...

Mulder: Merry Christmas.

Scully: Well, I got you a little something, too.

[She hands him his gift, and he chuckles and shakes it. She grins and they run over to the couch to open their presents happily.]

Daryl: If you're wondering did I ask for this gift no, sir, I did not, no more than I asked to lose this here limb. But I should've expected it and I'll tell you why. Because I come from a long line of healing people. I'm a spiritual man, in touch... with the really real. The... the unseen real.

Scully: I heard you. Mulder, when was the last time you went on a date?

Mulder:(pauses; in a controlled way, one word at a time) I will talk to you later.

Scully:(to herself, after hanging up) The blind leading the blind.

Holman: I've been envious of men like you my whole life. Based on your physical bearing, I'd assumed you were... More experienced. I mean... You spend every day with agent Scully a beautiful, enchanting woman. And you two never, uh...? (no response from Mulder) I... confess I find that shocking. I... I've seen how you two gaze at one another.

Mulder: This is about you, Holman. I'm here to help you. I'm perfectly happy with my friendship with Agent Scully.

Holman: So according to your theory I walk in there, tell her I love her and the drought will end?

Mulder: Just tell her how you feel. (Holman starts walking inside) And Holman. I do not gaze at Scully.

Scully:(about Sheila and Holman) Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with. (seems to realize she could be talking about herself and Mulder)

[All the couples at the reunion are dancing and kissing, including Holman and Sheila.]

SKINNER:(voiceover) Every minute of every day we choose. Who we are. Who we forgive. Who we defend and protect. To choose a side or to walk the line. To play the middle. To straddle the fence between what is and what should be. This was the course I chose. Trying to find the delicate balance of interests that can never exist. Choosing by not choosing. Defending a center which cannot hold. So death chose for me.

Mulder: What happened today? Anything out of the ordinary?

Skinner: I'm not going to play this game.

Scully: Look, it could've been anything. It could have been the slightest touch, or a handshake.

[Scully enters Skinner's room at the hospital. He looks very sick, but smiles as she enters.]

Scully: Sir, there's something I'd like to try. It's a treatment called therapeutic plasmapheresis. It requires filtering all of the blood in your body. It's a radical procedure and there is a danger that your body might go into shock.

Skinner: I'm in your hands. (weakly) I think I owe you an apology, Scully. You and Mulder.

Scully: Sir?

Skinner: I've been lying here thinking. Your quest... it should have been mine.

Scully: What do you mean?

Skinner: If I die now, I die in vain. I have nothing to show for myself. My life...

Scully: Sir, you know that's not true.

Skinner: It is. I can see now that... I always played it safe. I wouldn't take sides. Wouldn't let you and Mulder... pull me in.

Scully: You've been our ally more times than I can say.

Skinner: Not the kind of ally that I could have been. (Scully touches his wrist gently)

Mulder:(on phone) As in he, uh, plugs up like a cork when you stab him? (looking at an image of Fellig's stab wounds on his computer)

Scully: Mulder, where are you getting this stuff?

Mulder: Well, young man Ritter has been sending progress reports to Kersh. My computer may have inadvertently intercepted a few of those. He's got nice things to say about you, though... mostly. Why don't you let me do a little background check on Fellig for you.

Scully: Mulder...

Mulder: Come on. It's, you know... it's what I do now. I'm getting good at it.

[Scully sighs.]

Scully: He's right. Tell me, Ritter, did he have any help concocting that story?

Agent Ritter:(defensive) Look, Fellig is a murderer. Whether or not he did this specific one, I don't care-- not if it buys me a few days in the box with him.

Scully: No judge is going to issue a warrant based on this.

Agent Ritter: No, no, no. I know the judge. We'll have it by noon. (she stares at him in shock, then turns to leave) You know, Kersh warned me about you.

Scully: Uh, he did?

Agent Ritter: Yeah - you and your partner. God knows his reputation precedes him so I guess I should have seen this coming. You muck up my case, and Kersh'll hear about it. Are we clear, Dana?

Mulder:(opening voiceover; about Cigarette Smoking Man and his father, Bill Mulder) Two men, young, idealistic - the fine product of a generation hardened by world war. Two fathers whose paths would converge in a new battle - an invisible war between a silent enemy and a sleeping giant on a scale to dwarf all historical conflicts. A 50-years war, its killing fields lying in wait for the inevitable global holocaust. Theirs was the dawn of Armageddon. And while the world was unaware, unwitting spectators to the hurly-burly of the decades-long struggle between heaven and earth there were those who prepared for the end; who measured the size and power of the enemy, and faced the choices: stand and fight, or bow to the will of a fearsome enemy. Or to surrender - to yield and collaborate. To save themselves and stay their enemy's hand. Men who believed that victory was the absence of defeat and survival the ultimate ideology... No matter what the sacrifice.

Mulder: There must be some kind of mistake. I signed up for the aroma therapy treatment.

Scully:(frustrated) They've burned our clothes.

Mulder: Hey... I heard gray is the new black.

Scully: Mulder, this stinks, and not just because I think that woman is a... well, I think you know what I think that woman is.

Mulder:(dryly) No. Actually, you hide your feelings very well.

Mulder:(pointing gun at him) Sorry. Nobody home. What are you doing here?

Mulder:(talking over her; rolls up window) Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate the concern. (pissed off; turns the car and drives quickly)

Scully: Mulder.

Mulder: I was just one "howdy do" over the line.

Mulder: You know, Scully, someday we're going to look back on this and we're going to laugh. We'll just think of it as, uh... you know man pitted against the forces of nature. Think of it as a test of our mettle.

Angela: My bladder is pressing against your unborn child, Walter. He's going to have a head like a tortilla.

Walter: This thing is in the plumbing!

Angela: The volume alone could push it right back out to sea!

Arthur Dales: Oh, it's amazing. It's truly amazing.

Scully: What's that?

Arthur Dales: That you could come here in the face of a hurricane chasing a sea monster, yet, and end up bringing a new life into the world. And then slaying the monster and save this one's life as he was quite literally circling down the drain.

Mulder:(embarrassed) She didn't save my life, really...

Arthur Dales: Oh, yes, she did. Yes, with a gun to her head, no less.

Scully:(rationalizing) Well, you wouldn't have known to go out in the rain if I hadn't pointed it out that to you that it was the fresh water that killed the organism...

Mulder: No. No no no no... I-I saw the Shipley's cat!

Arthur Dales: Uh, well, I-I can't swallow that... No, no, no.

Mulder: I saw the cat, which had been saved which had been in the washing machine. And the Shipleys had boarded up their house which means that the only way they could have vanished was if the creature came up through the plumbing in a backwash of seawater. Seawater. And then the deputy who vanished from a bathtub full of Epsom salts.

Arthur Dales: If Agent Scully had not been there with you, I shudder to think what would have happened to you. I'd say you owe her your life. It takes a big man to admit this, but... if I had had someone as savvy as her by my side all those years ago in the X-Files I might not have retired. (both Mulder and Scully look a little embarrassed)

Scully: You didn't miss the meeting. You're extraordinarily late for the meeting. It's still going on.

Mulder: What are you doing down here?

Scully: We took a short break and I came looking for you. What are you doing down here, Mulder?

Mulder:(sarcastically) I'm having the best damn day of my life. Any moment I'm about to burst into song. (dryly) "Zip a dee doo dah." My, uh, waterbed sprung a leak and shorted out my alarm clock. (Scully looks surprised) My cell phone got wet and crapped out on me and the check I wrote my landlord to cover the, uh, damages is going to bounce if I don't deposit my pay. You ever have one of those days, Scully?

Scully: Since I've been working here? Yeah. When did you get a waterbed, Mulder?

Mulder:(he pauses, thinking; ignores the question) Bank's just down the street. I'll be back in ten. Cover for me, will you? (leaves)

Scully:(to herself) When do I not?

Mulder: I know. I missed the meeting.

Scully: Well, not yet, but, uh, only because it's the longest in FBI history.

Mulder: What are you doing down here, then?

Scully: Well, I came looking for you. We took a five-minute break (looks at watch) three minutes ago. Mulder, your cell phone's not working. (He glances up at her.) Did you oversleep?

Mulder: Scully, did you ever have one of those days you wish you could rewind and start all over again from the beginning?

Scully: Yes. Frequently. But, I mean, who's... who's to say that if you did rewind it and start over again that it wouldn't end up exactly the same way?

Mulder: So you think it's all just fate? We have no free will?

Scully: No, I think that we're free to be the people that we are - good, bad or indifferent. I think that it's our character that determines our fate.

Mulder: And all the rest is just preordained? I don't buy that. There's too many variables. Too many forks in the road. I meant to be on time to work this morning but my waterbed springs a leak flooding my apartment (Scully looks surprised) and the apartment below me so that makes me late for the meeting. Then I realize I got to write a check to cover the damages to my landlord but, as I'm walking to work, I realize that that's gonna bounce unless I deposit my pay. So now I got to go to the bank, which makes me even later.

Scully:(curious) Since when did you get a waterbed?

Mulder: I might just as easily not have a waterbed then I'd be on time for this meeting. You might just as easily have stayed in medicine and not gone into the FBI, and then we would never have met. Blah, blah, blah...

Scully: Fate.

Mulder: Free will. With every choice, you change your fate.

Mulder: I just got the weirdest sensation of deja vu. I've been having it all morning.

Scully: Well, that's fairly common.

Mulder: Yeah, but never to this degree. I mean, I woke up, I opened my eyes I was soaking wet... (Scully looks confused and curious) It's a long story but I had the distinct sensation that I had lived that moment before.

Scully:(videotaping the house) The local police departments were at a dead end so they turned to the FBI. AD Skinner, in assigning us this case thought a fruitful approach to the investigation would be if we went undercover posing as prospective home buyers as this planned community would seem to hide a dark, possibly murderous conspiracy of silence.

Mulder:(gets up close to the camera; seductively) You want to make that honeymoon video now?

Scully: Rob and Laura Petrie?

Mulder: "Pee-trie."

Scully: Mulder, if we ever go undercover again I get to choose the names, okay?

Mulder: Fine.

Scully: It just tells me that you're not taking this seriously.

Mulder: I'm taking it seriously. I just don't understand why we're on it. It's our first catch back on the X-Files. This isn't an X-File.

Scully: Sure it is. It's unexplained. What do you want, aliens? Tractor beams?

Mulder: Wow. Admit it: you just want to play house. (demanding, jokingly) Woman, get back in here and make me a sandwich! (She stops, smiles slightly; throws her latex gloves at at his head; heads toward the door) Did I not make myself clear?

Scully: Mulder...

Mulder: The name... is Rob.

Mulder: Morning.

Win Shroeder: Oh! Oh, Rob, Laura. ("accidentally?" sprays their legs with the hose) I'm so sorry. So, good morning. So how was your first night? Peaceful?

Mulder:(looking fondly at Scully) Oh, it was wonderful. We just spooned up and fell asleep like little baby cats. Isn't that right, Honeybunch?

Gene Gogolak: I'm afraid not. Rules are rules. It may not sound like anything-- a simple basketball hoop-- but from there, it's just a few short steps to spinning daisy reflectors and a bass boat in the driveway.

Mulder: In other words, anarchy.

Win Shroeder: Sweetheart? Did you use the dolphin-safe tuna this time?

[Win and Cami look shocked and horrified; Scully laughs awkwardly to try to break the tension.]

Win Shroeder: So... where'd you two meet?

[Scully opens her mouth to speak but is interrupted by Mulder.]

Mulder: Actually, it was at a UFO conference.

Win Shroeder: Flying saucers? Interesting. Wouldn't have thought you folks would have been into that.

Mulder:(puts arm around Scully) Well, it's not me so much as Laura. She's quite the New-Ager. I mean, she's into those magnetic bracelets and crystals and mood rings, what have you. I mean, God bless her she's a sucker for all that stuff.

Cami Shroeder: Well, I wouldn't have guessed that, would you?

Win Shroeder: Mm-mm.

Scully:(fake smile) No kidding.

Mulder: Yeah, there's no sign of him in his house. I didn't see him in the storm drain, either. I take it he's dead, Scully.

Scully:(correcting him, from the bathroom) Laura.

[Mulder sarcastically mouths "Okay.")

Scully:(from the bathroom) Mulder, speaking of cleaning up, whoever taught you how to squeeze a tube of toothpaste? (Her arm, coming from the bathroom doorway, shows him the tube squeezed in the middle; he ignores it)

Mulder:(sprawls out on the bed) Why kill Big Mike? (Scully comes out of the bathroom wearing a bright green mud mask; Mulder looks up and is startled) Whoa!

Scully: What's missing here is intent. What would be the motive? (throws sweatshirt at his head)

Mulder: Compulsive neatness, or a lack thereof. Have you noticed how everybody around here is obsessed with the neighborhood rules and the CC&Rs? You know what? You fit in really well here.

Scully:(pointedly looking at him lying on the bed) And you don't.

Mulder:(adjusting the pillows) Well, anyway, tomorrow I got a, uh, a surefire way of testing out my theory. (pats the bed beside him seductively; waggles his eyebrows at her; she raises her eyebrows; he tries coaxing) Come on, Laura, you know... we're married now.

Scully:(correcting) Scully, Mulder. Good night.

Mulder:(gets up and takes a pillow; pauses next to her; looks very serious) The thrill is gone. (Scully sighs)

[Mulder has just put a pink plastic flamingo in the front yard; looks around confidently and pumps his fists]

Mulder: Bring it on.

Scully: Look, Mulder, huge creatures aside do you care to hear what I think?

Scully:(stares at him) You're not going to tell me that a dog did this.

Mulder:(sounding serious, but grinning) A bad dog.

Scully:(looking in the crate) What did you find?

Officer Jeffrey Cahn: Nothing conclusive, really, but I can tell you the dog's not likely still on the ship.

Mulder: How did you determine that?

Officer Jeffrey Cahn: You ever owned a dog, sir?

Mulder: Yeah.

Officer Jeffrey Cahn: Had to clean up after it? (Mulder grins and agrees)

Scully: I don't suppose you can tell us what kind of dog this is.

Officer Jeffrey Cahn: I'm not really sure. The man it was shipped to's name is Detweiler. Dr. Ian Detweiler. Calls himself a "cryptozoologist."

Mulder:(interested) Cryptozoologist?

Officer Jeffrey Cahn: They deal with animals thought to be extinct.

Mulder:(continuing) Animals that aren't supposed to exist like Sasquatch and the Ogopogo and the Abominable Snowman and-

Scully:(interrupting) Don't mind him. He'll go on forever.

Scully: Jake Conroy, age 30. He was employed as a customs agent by the Federal Government. The bite marks match those of the victims on the Chinese freighter. In this case, it bit off the man's hand. There's some talk in the house that he may be involved in the theft of the animal and that it turned on him.

Mulder: Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Mulder: I think we're speaking in too common terms about an animal we're calling a dog but which displays none of the behavior of man's best friend.

Scully: You mean covering up crime scenes?

Mulder:(smiles) You get a biscuit, Scully.

Stacy: You two looking for Karin about boarding?

Mulder: No, it's actually more of a behavior problem.

Scully:(glancing up at Mulder) Yeah, he doesn't listen and he chews on the furniture.

Scully:(reading some of Karin's book titles) Ah. "The Wolf Inside." "Dogs Don't Lie." "Better Than Human." (pause) "Better Than Human?"

Mulder:(shrugging apologetically) She's not a real people person.

Mulder: Everything okay, Scully?

Scully: How well do you know this woman, Mulder?

Mulder: How well do you know anybody you meet on the Internet? She likes to talk.

Scully: Well, I question her motives.

Mulder: You're suggesting that this case was a way to get me out here, to meet me? (no response; Mulder smiles) I'm flattered, but, no. I don't know this woman. I'd go out on a limb and say there's no way in hell she has anything to do with those four people being dead.

Scully: She's enamored of you, Mulder. Don't underestimate a woman. They can be tricksters, too. (They share a look.)

Karin Berquist: Where's Fox?

Scully: Continuing his investigation.

Karin Berquist: You're not working together?

Scully: No. This is my investigation.

Karin Berquist: Of...?

Scully: You.

Karin Berquist: I have no idea what you mean.

Scully: I thought at first that they were eccentricities or affectations - the dark, the clothes - but it's photosensitivity. Your sleeves cover up skin lesions. It's why you're here amongst the humans instead of out in the field. Systemic lupus erythematosus.

Karin Berquist: Lupus... From the Latin for "wolf." Ironic, isn't it?

Scully: Ironic or perverse?

Karin Berquist: I've ignored the symptoms for years. I've always felt more like a wolf than a person.

Scully: But not with Mulder. With Mulder, you found somebody you could communicate with.... someone who challenged you... But that wasn't enough. You needed to lure him out here.

Karin Berquist:(flatly) I lack your feminine wiles.

Scully:(looks away for a moment) You don't believe it, do you - not for a minute - that there's an animal out there killing?

Karin Berquist: I don't believe that this man, Dr. Detweiler, ever caught it. I lived in Asia. I know about the Wanshang Dhole and if it survived for over a century it was because it was more cunning than man, more cunning than this man Detweiler ever dreamed of.

Mulder: Through some blood curse, this man undergoes some kind of nocturnal transformation. He becomes the same shape-shifting trickster as that mythical dog.

Scully: So, what is he going to do? Walk in here, skitter across the linoleum and pee in the corners?

Mulder: It's about territoriality. He's going to come back here tonight to make sure his dominance isn't challenged. He's going to put down the threat he failed to eliminate when he attacked Cahn. Karin Berquist confirmed it.

Scully: Mulder, the only thing Karin Berquist is interested in is you. (he chuckles dismissively) You're kidding yourself if you think that she hasn't manipulated this entire situation for her own purposes.

Scully:(defensive) Mulder, there are one or two somewhat well-documented cases. (He says nothing; looks off to the side and nods thoughtfully; she sighs) Mulder, shut up. (He tries to look innocent and totally fails)

Phillip Padgett:(voiceover, as Scully looks at the charm left under Mulder's door) Her prompt mind ran through the golconda of possibilities - was this trinket from the killer? Was there a message contained in its equivocal symbolism? Was he a religious fanatic who had, in fervid haste licked the envelope, leaving the telltale DNA that would begin his unraveling? She had a condign certainty the killer was a male... and now, as she held the cold metal at her fingertips she imagined him doing the same trying to picture his face.

Phillip Padgett: It would be a plain face, an average face... A face people would be prone to trust. She knew this inherently, being naturally trusting herself. But the image she conjured up was no better than the useless sketch composites that littered her files. Preconsciously, she knew this wasn't her strength as an investigator. She was a marshall of cold facts, quick to organize, connect, shuffle, reorder and synthesize their relative hard values into discreet categories. Imprecision would only invite sexist criticism that she was soft, malleable not up to her male counterparts.

Phillip Padgett: Even now, as she pushed an errant strand of titian hair behind her ear she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess. To be thought of as simply a beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable. But she was beautiful... fatally, stunningly prepossessing. Yet the compensatory respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart... to let it open, to let someone in.

[Scully enters a church to look at a painting of Christ with a burning heart. Phillip Padgett comes up next to her.]

Phillip Padgett: I often come here to look at this painting. It's called "My Divine Heart" after the miracle of Saint Margaret Mary. Do you know the story... The revelation of the Sacred Heart? Christ came to Margaret Mary his heart so inflamed with love that it was no longer able to contain its burning flames of charity. Margaret Mary... so filled with divine love herself, asked the Lord to take her heart... and so he did placing it alongside his until it burned with the flames of his passion. Then he restored it to Margaret Mary sealing her wound with the touch of his blessed hand.

Scully: Why are you telling me this?

Phillip Padgett: You came here specifically to see this painting, didn't you?

Scully: Yes. How did you know that?

Phillip Padgett: I saw you enter. The way you knew right where it was.

Scully: I know you. You live next to somebody I work with. Why are you following me?

Phillip Padgett: I'm a writer. That's what I do - imagine how people behave. I have to admit I've noticed you. I do that... Notice people. I saw that you wear a gold cross around your neck so I was taking a chance with the painting - explaining something you may have already known. I saw Georgetown parking permits on your car dating from 1993 and a government-exempt sticker that lets you park anywhere you like. You don't live in this area but as a federal employee, you have reason to frequent it. You're fit, with muscular calves so you must exercise or run. There's a popular running route right nearby that you might use at lunch or after work. You'd have noticed this church in passing and though parking is always a problem in this part of town your special privileges would make it easy to visit... not as a place of worship but because you have an appreciation for architecture and the arts... and while the grandeur is what you'd take away from your visit, this painting's religious symbolism would have left a subconscious impression jogged by the gift you received this morning.

Phillip Padgett: I have to admit to a secret attraction. (she looks away and rolls her eyes) I'm sorry I didn't include a note explaining that but you didn't know me then.

Scully: Yeah, and I don't know you now and I don't care to.

Phillip Padgett: I see this is making you uncomfortable (she rolls her eyes, like "obviously") and I'm sorry. It's just that I'm taken with you. That never happens to me. We're alike that way.

Phillip Padgett:(voiceover) The overture in the church had urged the beautiful agent's partner into an act of Hegelian self-justification. Expeditiously violating the fourth amendment against mail theft, he prepared to impudently infract the first. But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions Special Agent Dana Scully had herself become... simply aroused.

[Cuts to scene of Scully and Padget in bed together.]

Phillip Padgett:(voiceover) She felt an involuntary flush and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence. But the images came perforce and she let them play-- let them flood in like savory-- or more a sugary confection-- from her adolescence when her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial. 'Ache,' 'pang,' 'prick,' 'twinge'-- how ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioral pathology now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire. The stranger had looked her in the eye and knew her more completely than she knew herself. She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal. Had the stranger unleashed in her what was already there or only helped her discover a landscape she, by necessity, blinded herself to? What would her partner think of her?

Phillip Padgett: Best not to question it. (pause) See? You are curious about me.

Scully: Well, you lead a curious life.

Phillip Padgett: It's not so different from yours I imagine - lonely.

Scully:(looks away) Loneliness is a choice.

Phillip Padgett: I made a mistake myself.

Mulder: What's that, Mr. Padgett?

Phillip Padgett: In my book, I'd written that Agent Scully falls in love but that's obviously impossible. (looking at Mulder) Agent Scully is already in love.

Phillip Padgett: But what is the truth?

Ken Naciamento: Man imagines that he, too, can open up his heart and expose the burning passion - the flames of charity - like the creator himself but this is not in his power.

Phillip Padgett: But I have love in my heart.

Ken Naciamento: Yes, as a thief has riches, a usurer money. You have it... but man's only power, only true power is to destroy it.

Phillip Padgett: Then what's the end of my story?

Ken Naciamento: There can only be one true ending if it is to be perfect.

Scully: Mulder, it is such a gorgeous day outside. Have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find life on this planet?

Mulder: I have seen the life on this planet, Scully, and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere. (Scully opens a paper bag and takes out something that looks like ice cream) Did you bring enough ice cream to share with the rest of the class?

Mulder:(returning to his book, disgusted) Ugh. Bet the air in my mouth tastes better than that. You sure know how to live it up, Scully.

Scully:(continuing to eat) Oh, you're Mr. Live-it-up. Mulder, you're really Mr. Squeeze-every-last-drop-out-of-this-sweet-life, aren't you? On this precious Saturday you've got us grabbing life by the testes - stealing reference books from the FBI library in order to go through New Mexico newspaper obituaries for the years 1940 to 1949, and for what joyful purpose?

Mulder: Looking for anomalies, Scully. Do you know how many so-called "flying disc" reports there were in New Mexico in the 1940s?

Scully: I don't care. Mulder, this is a needle in a haystack. These poor souls have been dead for 50 years. Let them rest in peace. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Mulder: No, I won't sit idly by as you hurl cliches at me. "Preparation is the father of inspiration."

Scully: "Necessity is the mother of invention."

Mulder: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

Scully:(taking another bite) "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die."

Mulder: "I scream, you scream, we all scream for"- nonfat tofutti rice dreamsicles! (sets the book down; lunges for Scully. He grabs her arm and takes a bite of the dreamsicle, breaking it; it splatters on the page)

Scully: No-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! (laughing) Mulder! (she looks at the page; accusingly) Mulder!? You cheat. I can't believe that you've been reading about baseball this whole time.

Mulder: Reading the box scores, Scully. You'd like it. It's like the Pythagorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all baseball games into one tiny, perfect, rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny summer day back in 1947. It's like the numbers talk to me, they comfort me. They tell me that even though lots of things can change some things do remain the same. It's...

Scully:(interrupting) Boring. Mulder, can I ask you a personal question?

Mulder: Of course not.

Scully: Did your mother ever tell you to go outside and play? Mulder?

Mulder:(looking at the page the ice cream spilled on; to himself) Is that ...Arthur Dales?

Scully: You just defaced property of the U.S. Government. (he grabs the page and his jacket and runs out of the office; she smiles slightly) You rebel.

Mulder: How do you know my name?

Arthur Dales: My brother told me all about you. He said you were the biggest jackass in the Bureau since he retired. (sarcastic) Yeah, we're big fans. Sometimes we'd stay awake hours at night just talking about you. Just fascinating. Now, unless you're hiding some Chinese food let's call it a day.

Mulder: I don't really care about the baseball, so much, sir. What I care about is this man in the picture with you. I believe to be an alien bounty hunter.

Arthur Dales:(opening the door a crack) Of course you don't care about the baseball, Mr. Mulder. You only bothered my brother about the important things like government conspiracies and alien bounty hunters and the truth with a capital "T."

Arthur Dales: Mr. Mulder... maybe you'd better start paying a little less attention to the heart of the mystery and a little more attention to the mystery of the heart.

Young Arthur Dales: Mr. Exley, I'm not a big sports hero like yourself, sir and I really don't have an opinion on Negroes or Jews or Communists or even Canadians and vegetarians, for that matter but I cannot stomach the murder of a man of any persuasion or any color being flaunted and solicited in my town. (shows him the flyer) Not on my watch. So you can be safe with me in a cell down at the precinct or you can be safe with me here on the bus. Seeing as how this is still America you're free to choose, sir.

Mulder: Let me get this straight: a free-spirited alien fell in love with baseball and ran away from the other non-fun-having aliens and made himself black, because that would prevent him from getting to the majors where his unspeakable secret might be discovered by an intrusive press and public and you're also implying that...

Arthur Dales: You certainly have a knack for turning chicken salad into chicken spit.

Mulder: You're also implying that this baseball-playing alien has something to do with the famous Roswell UFO crash of July '47, aren't you?

Arthur Dales: You're just dying to connect the dots aren't you, son? Look, I give you some wood and I ask you for a cabinet. You build me a cathedral. I don't want a cathedral. I like where I live. I just want a place to put my TV. Understand my drift?

Mulder:(pauses) Drift it is, sir.

Arthur Dales: Trust the tale, Agent MacGyver, not the teller. That which fascinates us is by definition true. Speaking metaphorically, of course.

Mulder: Okay, so was Ex a man who was metaphorically an alien or an alien who was metaphorically a man or a something in between that was literally an alien-human hybrid? (Dales sighs; hands Mulder alcohol) It's official. I am a horse's ass.

Josh Exley: Don't get cornball on me, man. Next thing you'll be telling me is I owe it to all the little kids to break the home-run record, or I owe it to the black folks who think I'm one of them, to make it to the majors or I should just keep playing out of some meaningless human concept of pride or loyalty.

Young Arthur Dales: I don't know, Ex.

Josh Exley: We don't think like that, man. We may be able to look like y'all, but we ain't y'all. You know the big thing that separates us from you?

Arthur Dales: What's that?

Josh Exley: We got rhythm. (both pause, then crack up)

Alien Bounty Hunter: Show me your true face or you will die without honor.

Josh Exley: This is my true face.

[Nighttime at a baseball field; Mulder is wearing a "Grays" jersey, hitting balls thrown by a pitching machine.]

Scully: So, uh... I get this message marked "urgent" on my answering service from one "Fox Mantle" telling me to come down to the park for a very special very early or very late birthday present. And, Mulder... I don't see any nicely wrapped presents lying around so, what gives?

Mulder: You've never hit a baseball, have you, Scully?

Scully: No, I guess I have, uh... found more necessary things to do with my time than- (a foul ball hits the fence; she jumps) slap a piece of horsehide with a stick.

Mulder: Get over here, Scully. (he holds the bat out to her, she takes it, but he keeps his hands on it, wrapping his arms around her and holding the bat with her, around her hands)

Mulder: This ain't cheap. I'm paying that kid ten bucks an hour to shag balls. Hey, it's not a bad piece of ash, huh? (gives him a "Look.")The bat - talking about the bat. Now, don't strangle it. You just want to shake hands with it. (doing silly voices) "Hello, Mr. Bat. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." "Oh, no, no, Ms. Scully. The pleasure's all mine." (she laughs, and they hold onto the bat) Okay, now, we want to... we want to go hips before hands, okay? (holds his hand a few inches from her hip) We want to stride forward and turn. That's all we're thinking about. So, we go hips... before hands, all right? (gingerly touches her hip and, with his hands and his own hips pressed against her, turns her correctly)

Scully: Okay.

Mulder: One more time. (he touches and turns her hips more confidently) Hips... before hands, all right?

Scully: Yeah.

Mulder: What is it?

Scully: Hips before hands.

Mulder:(speaking right into her ear) Right. We're going to wait on the pitch. We're going to keep our eye on the ball. Then, we're just going to make contact. We're not going to think. We're just going to let it fly, Scully, okay?

Scully: Mm-hmm.

Mulder: Ready? (he tries to readjust their grips on the bat; they struggle with it for a moment)

Scully: I'm in the middle. (gets her hands back between his; both grining)

Mulder: All right, fire away, Poorboy. (a ball comes at them; they hit it together) Ooh! That's good. All right, what you may find is you concentrate on hitting that little ball... The rest of the world just fades away - all your everyday, nagging concerns.

[Scully giggles; they continue hitting the ball.]

Mulder: The ticking of your biological clock. (hit) How you probably couldn't afford that nice, new suede coat on a G-Woman's salary. (hit) How you threw away a promising career in medicine... (intimately into her ear) to hunt aliens with a crackpot, albeit brilliant, partner.

[She gives him another "Look"]

Mulder: Getting into the heart of a global conspiracy. Your obscenely overdue triple-X bill. Oh, I... I'm sorry, Scully. Those last two problems are mine, not yours. (hit)

Scully:(smiling happily) Shut up, Mulder. I'm playing baseball.

[They continue to hit the balls. Scully laughs. As the balls fly up into the black, star-studded night sky, we see them turn into shooting stars.]

Byers: My name is John Fitzgerald Byers. I was named after our 35th president, and I keep having this beautiful dream. In my dream, the events of November 22nd, 1963, never happened. In it, my namesake was never assassinated. Other things are different, too, in my dream. My country is hopeful and innocent; young again. Young in spirit. My fellow citizens trust their elect officials, never once having been betrayed by them. My government is truly "of the people, by the people, for the people." All my hopes for my country, for myself... all are fulfilled. I have everything a person could want: home and family... and love. Everything that counts for anything in life... I have it. But the dream ends the same way every time. I lose it all.

Byers: And that man that you're with...

Susanne Modeski: My fiance? I'm sorry, John, I think you better go.

Byers: No, wait. Wait. Ten years ago, I saw you thrown into a car. Kidnapped right in front of me. Did that not happen? Did I just dream all of that?

Susanne Modeski: It happened. But things got better.

Langly: What if 'they' did something to him? You know, to make him pancake himself?

Scully: Who's "they?"

Langly: You know... "them."

Scully:(rolling her eyes) I'll begin with the Y-incision.

Scully: What happened?

Langly: I'm thinking that you got a little queasy and took a header. You know, blood and guts can bother some people. (gags)

Scully:(seems intoxicated) Yeah. I guess.

Langly: You gonna be alright?

Scully: Sure, cutie.

[Both stand to examine Jimmy's corpse]]

Langly: So, you're done with Jimmy?

Scully: Done. Done. Done. (tries to push examining table with no success) How do you roll this thing?

Langly: Uh, Scully?

[Scully continues to try to figure out the examining table]

Langly: What killed him?

Scully: In my medical opinion -- BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!! *claps*

Langly: And that's all you found?

Scully: That's all I know.

[Scully slips trying to push the examining table]

Langly: Scully?

Frohike: Hey Timmy. I'm sorry about Jimmy.

Timothy Landau: Hey Langly, the guys are all up in my room for a round of Dungeons and Dragons, in honor of Jimmy.

Langly:(hand on heart for a moment) Lord Manhammer will be in attendance. (to Frohike) I'm going to go play a little D&D, uh, in memoriam.

Frohike: That's touching, man.

[Frohike hears Scully's laugh, and leaves his slot machine to see her surrounded by a huge group of men.]

Frohike: Scully?

Scully: Aw, hey. Long time, no see. (a man whispers something into her ear) No, that's not nice. I like Hickey. (she rubs his head, messing up his hair. Agent Morris Fletcher [from Dreamland I/II] holds out a pack of cigarettes to her)

Morris: Cigarette? (she leans in and takes out a cigarette with her lips seductively)

Frohike: You don't smoke.

Scully: But who's got a match? (a dozen lighters are in front of her instantly) Well ... I just can't decide who lights my fire.

Frohike: That's it. (grabs cigarette from Scully's mouth) Alright, you dandies, back off. This is Special Agent Dana Scully of the FBI. If you so much as touch her, you may be committing a federal offense. (to Scully) Come on, come on. (he pulls her away)

Frohike: I don't understand. Why would the government want to turn Scully into a bimbo?

Scully: Hello, Mulder? Can you hear me? I'm at the hotel. Where are you? What do you mean, "What hotel?" Las Vegas. I'm in Las Vegas, aren't you? You called me. What do you mean you didn't call me? ...Oh, man, I am going to kick their asses.

Scully:(voiceover) From Space, it seems an abstraction-- a magician's trick on a darkened stage. And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive. It first appeared in the sea almost four billion years ago in the form of single-celled life. In an explosion of life spanning millions of years, nature's first multicellular organisms began to multiply... and then it stopped. 440 million years ago, a great mass extinction would kill off nearly every species on the planet leaving the vast oceans decimated and empty. Slowly, plants began to evolve, then insects, only to be wiped out in the second great mass extinction upon the Earth. The cycle repeated again and again. Reptiles emerging, independent of the sea only to be killed off. Then dinosaurs, struggling to life along with the first birds, fish, and flowering plants - their decimations Earth's fourth and fifth great extinctions. Only 100,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens appear-- man. From cave paintings to the bible to Columbus and Apollo 11, we have been a tireless force upon the earth and off cataloguing the natural world as it unfolds to us. Rising to a world population of over five billion people all descended from that original single cell, that first spark of life. But for all our knowledge, what no one can say for certain, is what or who ignited that original spark. Is there a plan, a purpose or a reason to our existence? Will we pass, as those before us, into oblivion, into the sixth extinction that scientists warn is already in progress?

Scully: Or will the mystery be revealed through a sign, a symbol, a revelation?

Scully: It began with an act of supreme violence-- a big bang expanding ever outward, cosmos born of matter and gas, matter and gas ten billion years ago. Whose idea was this? Who had the audacity for such invention? And the reason? Were we part of that plan ten billion years ago? Are we born only to die? To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth before giving way to our generations? If there is a beginning, must there be an end? We burn like fires in our time only to be extinguished. To surrender to the elements' eternal reclaim. Matter and gas... will this all end one day? Life no longer passing to life, the Earth left barren like the stars above, like the cosmos. Will the hand that lit the flame let it burn down? Let it burn out? Could we, too, become extinct? Or if this fire of life living inside us is meant to go on, who decides? Who tends the flames? Can he reignite the spark even as it grows cold and weak?

Scully:(voiceover) I came in search of something I did not believe existed. I've stayed on now, in spite of myself. In spite of everything I've ever held to be true. I will continue here as long as I can... as long as you are beset by the haunting illness which I saw consume your beautiful mind. What is this discovery I've made? How can I reconcile what I see with what I know? I feel this was meant not for me to find but for you... to make sense of - make the connections which can't be ignored... connections which, for me, deny all logic and reason. What is this source of power I hold in my hand - this rubbing - a simple impression taken from the surface of the craft? I watched this rubbing take its undeniable hold on you, saw you succumb to its spiraling effect. Now I must work to uncover what your illness prevents you from finding. In the source of every illness lies its cure.

Scully:(about to cry) I don't know what to believe anymore. Mulder, I was so determined to find a cure to save you that I could deny what it was that I saw and now I don't even know... I don't know... I don't know what the truth is... I don't know who to listen to. I don't know who to trust. (pauses; is crying) Diana Fowley was found murdered this morning. I never trusted her... but she helped save your life just as much as I did. She gave me that book. It was her key that led me to you. I'm sorry... I'm so sorry. I know she was your friend. (she puts her arms around him; they hold each other)

Mulder: Scully, I was like you once. I didn't know who to trust. Then I... I chose another path... another life, another fate, where I found my sister. The end of my world was unrecognizable and upside down. There was one thing that remained the same. (gently holds her face; looks in her eyes) You... were my friend, and you told me the truth. Even when the world was falling apart, you were my constant... my touchstone.

Scully: And you are mine.

[They move their faces close together; Scully kisses him on the forehead for a long time. They pull slightly apart; Scully puts his hat back on his head, cups his face in her hands. They look in each others' eyes before she gently touches his lips with her fingers before leaving. He stands in the doorway and closes his eyes.]

Mulder: If there's anybody that can tell us about the Millennium Group, it's him. He used to consult for them. Later, he fought to bring them down at the expense of his own career and reputation.

Scully: Single-minded.

Mulder: Yeah.

Scully: Sounds like someone I know.

Mulder: He's not our murderer, and those four dead bodies aren't dead and the millennium is... (looks at his watch) 14 hours away.

Scully: Mulder, those people, even when they were alive mangled biblical prophecy to the extent that it's unrecognizable. The year 2000 is just their artificial deadline - and besides, 2001 is actually the start of the new millennium.

Mulder:(slight smile) Nobody likes a math geek, Scully.

[Mulder and Scully are watching the New Year's celebrations on TV, which is showing kissing couples and everyone celebrating. They look a little awkward. Both turn to look at each other, then lean close and kiss gently for a few seconds, then smile.]

Mulder: Come on, you were cruising, right? I mean, a small town like this you're not exactly living La Vida Loca. I know-- I grew up in Dullsville, too, you know. Nothing to do but drive and park.

Tony: How long ago was that? (Mulder raises his eyebrows) Look. Don't you think I know what you're doing? You're like the tenth cop who's come in here trying to relate to me till I confess.

Scully: If you didn't do it, it's all the more reason to clear it up.

Tony: Everything I know is in my statement.

Mulder: Okay, but bear with us 'cause we're old and stupid. (Scully hides a smile by looking down)

Mulder: I don't know-- some kind of territorial or spiritual entity, maybe. (Scully sighs) Poltergeists have long been associated with violent acts like this and they tend to manifest around young people. They seem to be drawn to the turmoil of adolescence.

Scully:(innocently, almost coy) Mulder. Rather than spirits... can we at least start with Tony's friends? (looks like she is playing with his tie) Please? Just... for me?

Max:(to Scully) You must have been a Betty, back in the day. (walks away)

Mulder: This man fell for 30 floors, plus the distance down this shaft, because these doors just happened to be open-- straight through, nothing but net.

Scully: Ouch.

Mulder: I'm guessing that's what he said. After, he got up, climbed out of here and scampered off into the night.

Scully: You know in 1998, there was a British soldier who plummeted 4,500 feet when his parachute failed and he walked away with a broken rib?

Mulder: What's your point?

Scully: My point is that if there's a wind gust, or a sudden updraft and, plus, if he landed in exactly the right way, I mean, I don't know. Maybe he just got lucky.

Mulder: What if he got really, really lucky? That's your big scientific explanation, Scully? I mean, how many thousands of variables would have to convene in just the right mixture for that theory to hold water?

Scully: I don't know.

Mulder: Well, thousands.

[There is a creaking sound, and Mulder suddenly crashes through the floor to the room below]

Mulder: A programmed behavior prompted and manifested by suggestion in this case, a rhythmic motion of the hands producing a unconscious act in a conscious state. (Raises and lowers his hand; she gives him a Look.) Doesn't work on you. (She smiles.)

Mulder: You know, it's funny, when all is said and done, there's not much mystery in murder.

Billy LaBonge: Yo. Can't you do anything that ain't a hundred years old? That ain't old school, that's decrepit.

Maleeni:(patiently) Young man, shall I come heckle you on your job? Make sure you count out the requisite number of McNuggets?

Mulder: So, basically he died of a heart attack, somebody crept up behind him, sawed his head off and then glued it back on all in the space of 30 seconds. (begins laughing) Does that make sense to you?

Scully: No. Which makes it even stranger still because, as far as I can tell this body has been dead for over a month. I see signs of refrigeration.

Mulder: And yet he performed yesterday. What a trooper.

Pinchbeck: Come in. Good morning, Mr. And Mrs...?

Mulder:(quickly; taking out his badge) Agents... Mulder and Scully. FBI.

Billy LaBonge: What's in it for me? I mean, let's say I help you out. What do I get in return?

Scully:(hopefully) The feeling of pride that comes from performing your civic duty?

Mulder: How did this impersonator switch out the dead body?

Billy LaBonge: With ease. You're going to kick yourselves when I show you how he did this, it's so simple. 'Cause magic is all about... (wiggles fingers mysteriously) misdirection.

[Mulder does the same silly finger-waggle at Scully; she smiles and tries to ignore him.]

Billy LaBonge: Your impersonator simply made sure everyone was looking the other way when he pulled Maleeni's body from its secret hiding place underneath... the floor. (Dramatically lifts one of the floor panels up from the bottom of the van, revealing... nothing; none of the other panels show anything either; surprised) Man, this guy's good.

Mulder: Don't you find it odd that the amazing Maleeni's a lousy poker player? I mean, this is a guy who's adept at manipulating cards.

Scully: Maybe he wasn't so adept. LaBonge certainly doesn't have a high opinion of his skills.

Mulder: There's another possibility. Behold - an ordinary household quarter. (holds up a quarter) I'm going to take the quarter from my right hand and place it into my left hand. (flourishes) Where is it?

Scully: It's in your right hand.

Mulder:(shows empty right hand) Oh, no, no, no.

Scully:(taps his right hand; nothing still. She smiles, impressed) Ah... That's not bad.

Mulder:(reaches out to grab her nose) Blow your nose, Scully.

Scully:(warning him) Mulder...

Mulder:(holding her nose between his fingers) Blow your nose.

Scully:(deadpan) Ah-choo.

Mulder:(quarter falls into his hand) Ta-da.

Scully:(amused) Amazing!

Mulder:(proudly) The great Muldeeni!

Scully: You know, Mulder, there's still one thing that you haven't explained.

Mulder: What's that?

Scully: How the Amazing Maleeni was able to turn his head completely around.

Mulder: I don't know that.

Scully: I do. I'll show you. Observe. (gets down on hands and knees on the floor; Mulder grins. Puts her hands on the floor, turns one hand a full 360 degrees; Mulder is impressed)

Mulder: Gee! Very nice. How'd you do that?

Scully: Well... magic. (keeps walking down the hall; he follows)

Mulder: No. Seriously, Scully, how'd you do it? You know, it's not the same thing. It's different with the head. Come on. Look at this. (does the disappearing thumb trick; she ignores him)

Mulder: Harold, you see so much, but you refuse to see him. You refuse to let him go. But you have to let him go now Harold, he's protected, he's in a better place, they're all in a better place, we both have to let go, Harold.

Scully: "What is it"? Mulder, have you noticed that we're on television?

Mulder: I don't think it's live television, Scully. She just said *bleep*.

Scully: Look, Mulder, you want to talk about werewolves to me you can knock yourself out. I may not agree with you but at least I'm not going to hold it against you but this... Mulder, this could ruin your career.

Scully: Mulder, when you find me dead, my desiccated corpse propped up staring lifelessly through the telescope at drunken frat boys peeing and vomiting into the gutter just know that my last thoughts were of you and how I'd like to kill you.

Scully: [voice over] Time passes in moments ... moments which, rushing past define the path of a life just as surely as they lead towards its end. How rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen, to consider whether the path we take in life is our own making or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed. But what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes? Might we then see the endless forks in the road that have shaped a life? And, seeing those choices, choose another path?

Mulder: But that was merely prelude of what was to come. Three years later, in 1994 even more complex formations occurred simultaneously on opposite ends of the English countryside with the Mandelbrot Set, were it still there, at its center. Then, in 1997, even more complex formations occurred... [Scully is completely engrossed in her salad; doesn't listen to him at all. Mulder pauses] ... and I'm not wearing any pants right now.

Skinner: Dr. Voss, can you enlighten us as to what Dr. Scobie intended to tell the grand jury? We know it had to do with company research.

[The Lead Counsel, a large lawyerly looking man sitting next to Voss interrupts as Voss is about to answer]

Lead Counsel: I'm sorry. Dr. Voss would be in violation of his employment confidentiality clause in answering that question.

Skinner: Dr. Scobie was your friend?

Dr. Peter Voss: Yeah, for 14 years, mm-hmm.

Skinner: And yet you demoted him five weeks ago. You took him off a particular project. Can you tell us why that happened?

Lead Counsel: [interrupting] As before, Dr. Voss would be in violation of his confidentiality clause in answering questions regarding the nature of his work here at Morley. I'm sure you understand our cooperation cannot extend itself to revealing corporate secrets.

Skinner: [getting pissed] Yeah, I'm not sensing any "cooperation" whatsoever. In fact, I'm one more non-answer away from getting a federal warrant and searching this entire building.

Lead Counsel: Then this meeting is over. Dr. Voss. [The lawyers all begin to get up from the table. Mulder pulls an evidence bag from his pocket]

Mulder: Dr. Voss... can you tell me what that is? [He tosses the bag to Voss. Inside is the dead beetle from Jim Scobie's glass]

Mulder: This is an FBI fleet sedan from our Kansas City field office requisitioned by two seasoned agents there driven into a tree at 43 miles an hour by the female agent in a novel effort to kill her male counterpart. Now, you might think I'm going to suggest psychokinesis-- pk-- someone or something controlling the agents with remote, mind-bending power.

[Two slides of the woman who looks like Scully lying in full body cast in the hospital.]

Mulder: ...as if they temporarily lost control of their minds unable to alter their behavior.

[Two slides of the man who looks like Mulder, also in full body casts]

Mulder: You may think that I'm going to say it's past lives unresolved or fate, stalking the agents like an animal ...

Scully: ... but you're not.

Mulder: No, the interesting thing about these agents is they had worked together for seven years previously without any incident.

Scully: Seven years?

Mulder: Yeah, but they are not ... romantically involved if that's what you're thinking.

Scully: Not even I would be so farfetched.

[Mulder smiles slightly. The next slide shows that the two agents are in the same hospital room, with their matching injuries.]

Mulder: You have any ideas, Scully, any thoughts?

Scully: What I'm thinking, Mulder, is how familiar this seems. Playing Watson to your Sherlock. You dangling clues out in front of me one by one. It's a game, and... and, as usual, you're, you're holding something back from me. You're not telling me something about this case.

Mulder:(finger to his mouth, pretending to think hard about it) Hmm...

Scully: Okay, so these agents were investigating something. (Mulder chuckles) Something... much like what they themselves were almost killed by. Uh, something they came into contact with. Uh... Third party? (Mulder, playing with her, holds up two fingers) Two third parties. Twins? Relatives? A doppelganger? (Mulder shakes his head and taps his nose) A corporeal likeness that appears unbidden from the spirit world the sight of which presages one's own death or... a double, conjured into the world by a technique called bilocation... (Mulder stops teasing and looks up at her in awe as she continues) which in psychological terms represents the person's secret desires and impulses committing acts that the, uh, real person cannot commit himself... or herself? (he smiles at her; she's annoyed) Mulder, the slide, please! (He finally advances the projector to show a slide of the Kansas driver's license of Betty Templeton. Scully proudly claps her hands.) Yes!

Mulder:(lets her in; she goes and sits on the bed) What's wrong, Scully? You look sick.

Scully: I don't know what's wrong.

Mulder: Come in.

Scully: I, um... I was starting to get ready for bed and I started to feel really dizzy - vertigo or something - and then I just... I started to get chills.

Mulder: You want me to call a doctor?

Scully: No, I just... I just want to get warm. Thank you. (she climbs under the covers, he tucks her in before crawling in next to her and spooning with her)

Mulder: It's not worth it, Scully.

Scully: What?

Mulder: I want you to go home.

Scully: Oh, Mulder, I'm going to be fine.

Mulder: No, I've been thinking about it. Looking at you tonight, holding that baby... knowing everything that's been taken away from you. A chance for motherhood and your health and that baby. I think that... I don't know, maybe they're right.

Scully: Who's right?

Mulder: The FBI. Maybe what they say is true, though for all the wrong reasons. It's the personal costs that are too high. There so much more you need to do with your life. There's so much more than this. There has to be an end, Scully.

Scully: Mulder, if any of this is true...

Mulder: If it is, or if it isn't, I want you to forget about it, Scully.

Scully: Forget about it?

Mulder: You're not going back out there. I'm not going to let you go back out there.

Scully: What are you talking about?

Mulder: It has to end sometime. That time is now.

Scully: Mulder...

Mulder: Scully, you have to understand that they're taking abductees. You're an abductee. I'm not going to risk... losing you.

Scully: I won't let you go alone.

Agent Short: I see the money bleed out, but it just doesn't seem to make the results of your work any better. So many of the cases you investigate are left unexplained. Makes it hard to justify the expense.

Scully: So much of the work that we do cannot be measured in standard terms.

Agent Short: How would you measure it?

Scully: We open doors with the X-Files, which lead to other doors.

Agent Short: Doors leading to... "A conspiracy of men who cooperated with alien beings to create human alien hybrids." So we could all become slaves of an alien invasion.

Scully: I believe that there was once a conspiracy. I believe I was taken by men who subjected me to medical tests, which gave me cancer and left me barren.

Agent Short: But you don't believe in aliens?

Scully: I've seen things that I cannot deny.

Skinner:(enters her hospital room) Agent Scully.

Scully: Hi.

Skinner: Hi. How you feeling?

Scully: I'm feeling fine. They're just running some tests on me.

Skinner: Well... um... (he looks like he's in pain; he can't say it)

Scully:(almost crying) I already heard.

Skinner:(voice breaking) I lost him. I don't know what else I can say. I lost him. I'll be asked... what I saw. And what I saw, I can't deny. I won't.

Scully:(crying) We will find him. I have to. (Skinner nods and starts to leave) Sir, um... there's something else I need to tell you. Something that I need for you to keep to yourself. (she looks torn between laughing and crying) I'm having a hard time explaining it. Or believing it. But, um... (she smiles - half joy, half pain) I'm pregnant.

[Skinner is speechless. Scully tries to smile but is both laughing and sobbing.]

Scully:(voiceover) We live in a darkness of our own making... blind to a habitant world all but unseen by us. A world of beings traveling through time and space imaginable to us only as flights of fancy. Who are these beings we dare to imagine but fear to accept? What dark work goes on inside their impossible machines... cloaked from us by invisible forces? If they know our secrets, why can't we know theirs?

Doggett:(knocking on the door) FBI! I saw your curtains move. I know you're in there.

Trina:(opens door) M-Mr. Wells, I...

Martin Wells: Trina, you knew about the Nanny-cam, didn't you? You told the killer about it. You must have given him my key card, too.

Trina: Mr. Wells, I-I-I wasn't even there that night.

Doggett:(unholsters his gun) First thing you're supposed to say is: "What nanny-cam?" (pushes the door open suddenly, pushes her to the ground)

Martin Wells:(voiceover) The passage of time in prisons is not in a cell of brick and mortar but in one of hopes dashed and tragedies unaverted. How precious, then, the chance to go back only to discover that in facing the past you must face up to yourself... that exiting the prison of time doesn't free you from the prison of your own character... one from which there is no escape.

Scully: I am remarking that these wavelengths exist and the only thing that is stopping us from seeing them, if you will, is the biochemical structure of our eyes. I am conjecturing that if this structure was somehow different we'd have the ability to see things that we don't.

Doggett: Were you aware Mulder carried a second weapon, a Walther PPK?

Skinner: Yeah, in an ankle holster.

Doggett: I found it hidden under his sink. The clip was three rounds shy.

Skinner: What's this about?

Doggett: Three shots were fired in a house where Mulder investigated a case last May. He never filed a report on the case or the discharge of his weapon. Do you know any reason why?

Skinner: If Mulder did these things, he would've reported them.

Doggett: Mulder submitted case reports, all right but they indicate he was here in Washington on days his cell phone records prove he was in Pennsylvania.

Skinner: Are you calling Mulder a liar?

Doggett:(pointing to computer screen) This is the muzzle of Mulder's pistol. You see that there?

Skinner: It's blowback.

Doggett: Macrospatter of dried blood in a semi-circular pattern, which indicates Mulder fired close-range at something or someone.

Skinner: I've heard enough. (starts to leave)

Doggett: Where are you going?

Skinner: It's where you're going, Agent Doggett. You're trying to build a case that what? Mulder killed a man and then made himself disappear? That's not what happened. I told you before, he was abducted. I saw it!

Doggett: Agent Mulder signed falsified case reports.

Skinner:(angry) Oh, come on, John, this isn't about Mulder, it's about you! Your career. You give the FBI a narrative for Mulder's disappearance, you're off the X-Files and back on the fast-track to the directorship.

Doggett: I'm just trying to find the truth.

Skinner: You want the truth? Then ask Agent Scully!

Doggett: I can't do that.

Skinner: Why not?

Doggett: Because she... (sighing) she signed those case reports, too.

Skinner:(looks at the file; flatly) You take that story to OPR, the accusation alone could cost Scully her job.

Doggett: I'm not taking it to OPR. I'm taking it to you.

Doggett: Looks like you missed a spot, Mr. Hangemuhl.

(The Lone Gunmen are talking to Doggett and Skinner via webcam, and are wearing pajamas, bathrobes, etc. They look tired and slightly annoyed.)

Byers: We learned what we could. This is somewhat short notice, of course.

Mulder:(realizes she doesn't understand what he's saying; reaches out to touch her cheek but stops himself) Well ... the answer is "yes."

Scully:(she is overjoyed, and they smile at each other then embrace) Um... Well, I'll call Dr. Parenti and... (Mulder nods and smiles) I assume that he'll want to meet you and go through the, uh, the donor procedure.

[Skinner, in a tshirt, opens his door to see Scully standing outside. She's been crying.]

Scully:(weakly) What if he's dead? (He doesn't respond; she's embarrassed) I'm sorry. I just had a bad dream.

Skinner:(pauses) Let me get some clothes on. (She nods; he closes the door then comes out to join her in the parking lot.)

Scully: I once had a talk with Mulder about starlight. How it's billions of years old. (Both of them look upwards.) Stars that are now long dead whose light is still traveling through time. It won't die, that light. (Skinner watches her as she looks up.) Maybe that's the only thing that never does. He said that's where souls reside. I hope he's right.

Skinner:(long pause; he puts his arm around her shoulders) If you're trying to prepare yourself I want you to stop. Nothing says that we're going to stumble over him in some field. Nothing says he won't be fine.

[Scully nods, then she turns and buries her face in his chest, sobbing; he holds her and strokes her hair.]

Reyes: What do you think happened?

[Skinner looks at Scully.]

Scully: Isn't that what you're here to tell us?

Reyes: Oh, I have my own thoughts. It's just, what we think happened and what actually happened aren't always the same thing but not altogether insignificant, either.

Mulder: Look, Scully, I need to make sense of what happened to me. So that I can stop it. Because if I can't stop it, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. And who's to say it's going to stop there?

Scully: Mulder, if you go down the X-Files will go down, too. I mean, theoretically, they could put you in prison for what you're doing here.

Mulder: Yeah, well, compared to where I just was, prison would be a Princess cruise.

[Mulder closes the laptop and removes the hard drive.]

Scully: What are you doing?

Mulder: I'm going to book myself on that Princess cruise.

Scully: I'll book it for you. (takes the harddrive - and the responsibility - from him. He covers up the boxes, smiles and follows her.)

[Frohike opens the door of Scully's apartment for Mulder. They both smile.]

Frohike: You know, it's really not fair. You've been dead for six months and you still look better than me. But not by much. (they hug tightly, Mulder laughs softly)

Mulder: Melvin. I'd be a whole lot happier to see you if you'd just take your hands off my ass.

Frohike:(embarrassed, lets go and steps back) Sorry.

Byers: I think it goes without saying that we're all, uh, tremendously relieved.

Langly:(smiling) And not just because we got big questions about your involvement in a certain... blessed event.

[Langly glances significantly at Scully. Mulder appears surprised and looks over at her; she ignores his look and the comment.]

Mulder: Well, just remember, boys, this is America. Just because you get more votes doesn't mean you win.

Mulder: We call it the miracle of life. Conception - a union of perfect opposites - essence transforming into existence - an act without which mankind would not exist and humanity cease to exist. Or is this just nostalgia now? An act of biology commandeered by modern science and technology? God-like, we extract, implant, inseminate... and we clone. But has our ingenuity rendered the miracle into a simple trick? In the artifice of replicating life can we become the creator? Then what of the soul? Can it, too, be replicated? Does it live in this matter we call DNA? Or is its placement the opposite of artifice, capable only by God. How did this child come to be? What set its heart beating? Is it the product of a union? Or the work of a divine hand? An answered prayer? A true miracle? Or is it a wonder of technology - the intervention of other hands? What do I tell this child about to be born? What do I tell Scully? And what do I tell myself?

Scully: This has got to be a conspiracy. (holds up two dolls - one a girl, one a boy)

Woman: Aw... Maybe it'll be twins.

Scully: Thank you, but I would settle for one very healthy boy.

Women: Oh?

Scully: Or girl.

Women: Aww!

Older woman: So many secrets, Margaret.

Margaret Scully: What do you expect? My daughter works for the FBI.

Doggett: What is this place?

Skinner: An illegal medical facility for the purpose of human cloning. It goes on from here. In fact, it occupies the entire warehouse.

Doggett: You read about these things but you don't imagine they exist.

Skinner: Yeah, just like aliens.

Skinner: Talk to you a minute?

Mulder:(follows him outside) You said there'd been a murder?

Skinner: Yeah, we'll get there. Some business we need to clear up. Personal business. About Scully's baby, about who the father is.

Mulder:(smiles) Ahh... Yeah, I hear there's a pool running down at the FBI, placing bets.

Skinner: I've had my suspicions. That is, until I found out that you had questions. Questions about Scully's pregnancy itself.

Mulder: You want to know who the father is, that's Scully's business. But if you're asking me how a woman who was diagnosed as barren and unable to conceive is about to give birth in a couple days, that's an answer I can't honestly give.

Skinner: Well, I need answers. In light of what we found in there and in light of Scully's due date I need good, hard answers. Fast.

Mulder: Whatever you can't get elsewhere, just throw it together.

Scully:(stops him) Mulder, to go where? No, just stop! Can you tell me what's wrong? Is it something to do with my baby?

Mulder: You told me that he told you he knew how to stop Billy Miles. Are you telling me now that you think he's a liar?

Doggett: He is or he isn't. What the hell difference does it really make?

Mulder: It doesn't make any difference at all. Unless you want to protect Scully and that baby.

Doggett: And then what? How long can you keep this up? How long until the next Billy Miles rears his head? The next threat? The next phantom? You ever stop to ask yourself? (Mulder looks a little uncomfortable) All the sacrifice, the blood spilled - you've given nearly a decade of your life. Where the hell is it all going to end?

Mulder:(thinks for a moment; softly) I don't know. Maybe it doesn't.

Krycek: I could've killed you so many times, Mulder. You've got to know that. I'm the one that kept you alive. Praying you'd win somehow.

Mulder: Then there really is no God.

Krycek: You think I'm bad. That I'm a killer. We wanted the same thing, brother. That's what you don't understand.

Mulder: I wanted to stop them. All you wanted was to save your own ass.

Krycek: No. I tried to stop them. Tried to kill Scully's baby to stop them. It's too late. The tragedy's that you - you wouldn't let it go. That's why I have to do this. 'Cause you know how deep it goes. Right into the FBI.

Mulder: You want to kill me, Alex, kill me. Like you killed my father. Just don't insult me trying to make me understand.

Skinner: I was told to leave this alone. You and Mulder asked me to leave it be. To let Mulder disappear. We were concerned for the safety of the baby and for Mulder. Why am I risking that now? Why are you? Why are you getting mixed up with Doggett's investigation?

Dr Bronzino: "So many flowers... so little time."Scully: "Excuse me?"Dr Bronzino: "Pheromones, Dr Scully. Heavy in the air. Nature's natural attractants. Driving the insect world to go forth and pollinate."Scully: "I'm aware of how pheromones work. But according to this device there isn't a single pheromone to be found out here."

Dr Bronzino: "Well, that can't be right. The bio-sensor we use is an actual fly antennae over which the pheromones pass. But I modified the EAG to measure in picograms which makes it sensitive to traces a mile in any direction."Scully: "But I'm still not sure why you think that pheromones might cause an otherwise harmless fly to attack a human so violently, Doctor..."Dr Bronzino: "Rocky."Scully: "Rocky."Dr Bronzino: "Bugs are small-minded creatures, and therefore very predictable. They don't have moods, per se. They react to circumstance and stimuli, as they have been doing it for millennia."

Scully: "So what do you suppose they're reacting to out here?"Dr Bronzino: "It may be the bugs are being somehow driven crazy with desire. You know, they say we humans respond to pheromones, too."Scully: "Yeah, I tend to agree with that, yeah."Dr Bronzino: "'Women's dormitory syndrome'. It's believed that pheromones are the reason that women who live together share the same menstrual cycle."

Scully: "Fascinating."Dr Bronzino: "You know, when a male and female calliphorid fly mate they stay joined for up to one and a half hours. One and a half, doctor."Scully: "You know, Rocky... I'm a mother."Dr Bronzino: "Mothers are women, too."

Scully:(voiceover) One day, you'll ask me to speak of a truth - of the miracle of your birth. To explain what is unexplained. And if I falter or fail on this day, know there is an answer, my child, a sacred imperishable truth, but one you may never hope to find alone. Chance meeting your perfect other, your perfect opposite - your protector and endangeror. Chance embarking with this other on the greatest of journeys - a search for truths fugitive and imponderable. If one day this chance may befall you, my son, do not fail or falter to seize it. The truths are out there. And if one day you should behold a miracle, as I have in you, you will learn the truth is not found in science, or on some unseen plane, but by looking into your own heart. And in that moment you will be blessed - and stricken. For the truest truths are what hold us together, or keep us painfully, desperately apart.

Scully:(voiceover, reading an email from "trust_no1@mail.com," obviously Mulder) I've resisted contacting you for reasons I know you continue to appreciate. But, to be honest, some unexpected dimensions of my new life are eating away at any resolve I have left. I'm lonely, Dana, uncertain of my ability to live like this. I want to come home. To you, and to William.

[She begins writing an email response.]

Scully:(voiceover) I am physically shaking right now seeing your words. Wishing it were you speaking them to me. I want so badly to see you too, but you are still not safe here.

Doggett: What the hell are you doing?

Scully: I'm trying to teach a class.

Doggett: You understand what we're being offered here? If we know who these super-soldiers are we can go after them. This is somebody giving us a way that can make it safe for Mulder to come home.

Scully: These clothes that I'm wearing... they're my size. How the hell do you know my size?

Shadow Man: Your size? I know your blood type, your resting heart rate, your childhood fear of clowns. I know the name of your College boyfriend, your true hair color, your ATM pin number, favorite charities, pet peeves. I know you spend too much time alone. And I know... that on one lonely night you invited Mulder to your bed.

Scully:(her eyes well up with tears; speechless) Oh, my God.

Shadow Man: I was as surprised as you are.

Scully:(crying) Who authorizes you? I mean, what gives you the right? Who are you?!

Shadow Man: I'm the future, Agent Scully. And I risked my life being here.

Scully: Well, then why do it? I mean, why meet me?

Shadow Man: Because you can reach Mulder. Mulder needs to know what I know or he may have no future. Perhaps no one will. Another car is parked on the main road, half a mile out. If I see that you haven't contacted Mulder in the next twenty-four hours, I disappear and you never see me again. Do you understand, lady?

Doggett: Well, you can call the whole thing off?

Scully: I can't. I've already sent for him. Mulder's on a train. He'll be here at midnight.

Doggett: Maybe you can reach him.

Scully: You can't do that to me.

Doggett: I'm sorry.

Scully:(passionately) I want to see him so bad.

Doggett: I know. And I want to make sure that you get to, Dana. That's the whole reason I'm here.

Scully: Well, it's too late. And I have to go.

Scully:(voiceover of an email she's writing to Mulder) I hold no hope you can respond to this. Or that it reaches you. I only hope that you are alive.

Scully: I cannot help believing that you jumped off that train because you knew what I now know - that these "super-soldiers," if that's what they are, can in fact be destroyed. That the key to their destruction lies in the iron compound at that quarry.

Scully: I am scared for you, Mulder. And for William. The forces against us are unrelenting. But so is my determination. To see you again. To regain the comfort and safety we shared for so brief a time.

Kersh: Agent Comer - our undercover man - was sent to infiltrate the cult... based on a series of... threats.

Scully: What threats? Threats to who? To me, to my child...

Follmer: Threats... on Agent Mulder's life.

Scully:(looking at Follmer) That's what this is about? Then why pull me in here and show me those rubbings? I don't understand.

Follmer:(everyone else is silent) Before losing all contact with our undercover agent he sent us a communication. A communication we've been trying to confirm that, uh... (swallows nervously; gently) that Mulder was already dead.

[Scully meets his eyes, and he holds her gaze. She is visibly upset. Kersh looks sad and can't meet her eyes. Skinner can’t even look at her. Doggett seems to believe it's the truth.]

Margaret Scully: I know you're worried about him... that there are things about him that you just can't explain - but even if you were to get those answers what would it change?

Scully: Mom, he's my child.

Margaret Scully: And you have to love him and raise him in spite of everything. Dana, god has given you a miracle. A child that wasn't supposed to be. Maybe it's not to question... just to be taken as a matter of faith.

Scully: Mom, I can't take this on faith. I need to know. I need to know if it's really God I have to thank.

Langly: I need to remind you, Fletcher, that Doggett and Reyes aren't here to save you.

Morris: Get yourself a real hero, anyway. Not some dead teeny bopper.

Langly:(angrily) You want to know why Joey Ramone's my hero? 'Cause people like you never managed to grind him down. They never stole his spirit. He never gave in, never gave up, and never sold out. Right till his last breath. And he's not dead. Guys like that? They live forever.

Doggett: Cadet Hayes? Rudolph Hayes? I'm Agent Doggett. This is Agent Reyes. (Hayes is smelling a dead arm; Doggett is confused) Is that part of the training here, Cadet - smelling body parts?

Hayes: This man's flesh smells of creosote... but his skin is soft. Untanned. He worked indoors. A hardware store, probably. The tear marks at his elbow go from left to right. He was broadsided in a car accident. His hands gripped the wheel so hard... his thumb bone snapped on impact.

Doggett: You determined all that just by looking at that arm?

Hayes:(stands, looks at them) I see things.

Reyes: We came to thank you. Because of your analysis, we were able to work up a profile to catch the man who murdered those women.

Hayes: What's the profile?

Doggett: White male, twenty-five to thirty-five, ex-military. Employed near the bars where he met... why are you shaking your head?

Hayes: The profile's wrong. Your killer is in his forties. A felon recently arrived from out of state. His parole officer thinks he's looking for a job. He already has one - working for organised crime. He's killed many people. He's going to keep on killing. (walks away)

Doggett: I want to check somethin' out. (finds identical pieces of roof tile in the garbage can) Ah-ha. Hold this, please? (she takes the bag, he climbs up on the roof to see it's been re-tiled)Ah-ha.

Reyes: Twice with the "ah-ha's."

Doggett:(sigh) The roof's been patched. When I was inside, I knew I smelled fresh plaster.

Reyes: So, are you gonna fill me in?

Doggett: A - Eyewitness places the deceased inside this house just prior to the time of his demise. B - We found a fragment of roofing shingle at the scene of the impact. It would seem it matches the discarded piece you now hold in your hand. C - There's a hole in the roof, recently patched, this big around. Connect A to B to C.

Reyes: Much in the fashion of, say, Daffy Duck or Wiley Coyote, the deceased shot straight up through the roof, flew high into the air and landed on his buddy's car? (skeptically) You're serious?

Doggett: A to B to C. I gotta tell ya, I think I'm finally gettin' the hang of this job.

Reyes: Well, why name himself after cousin Oliver? None of the other Brady's particularly liked Oliver. He was a self-described pest.

Scully: A jinx. Cousin Oliver, the Jinx. (SCULLY tries to explain her knowledge of the show.) Oh, so maybe I watched an episode or two.

Doggett: Okay, so be it. Just tell me how this helps me bust him, and uh, I'm happy.

Scully: Well, I'm starting to hope that it doesn't come to that.

Reyes: What do you mean?

Scully: Well, the power that this man seemingly possesses is extraordinary. It needs to be studied.

Dr Reits: It could expand the scope of human knowledge. It could change everything.

Scully: It very well could. I mean, I've... I've been working this unit for nine years now. I-I've investigated nearly 200 paranormal cases. We are due for some incontrovertible proof. I want vindication, for... for Mulder and... for all of us.

Doggett: One big question. Why "The Brady Bunch"? Seriously, you two are fans. Why are people still watchin' a 30 year old TV show?

Scully: They're the, uh, perfect family. And since Oliver didn't have one as a child, he ... created one.

Doggett: Sure, I'd buy all that. But in this case, why "The Brady Bunch"? Why not "The Partridge Family"? Why not "Eight Is Enough"? (to Dr Reits) Where was Oliver when you first saw "The Brady Bunch"? He was with you, right?

Dr Reits: He'd always insisted we watch it together, every week I was there.

Doggett: And the longer you two were together, the more his psychokinetic power faded, until finally it went away completely. Now, what do you think that was?

Dr Reits:(slowly realizes) Because for the first time in his life, he was happy.

Doggett: Because he was with you.

Scully: Well, what are you suggesting is the course of action, John?

Doggett: A - Oliver's gonna die if he continues to use his power. B - his power goes away when he's happy. And C - you're the father he never had, and he loves you. A to B to C.

Doggett: So close, Dana. I'm sorry you don't get your proof.

Scully: Me too. Well, maybe I've had it these past nine years. If not proof of the paranormal, then ... of more important things. (looks at Oliver for a moment, then leaves)

Doggett: Well, here's hopin' the TV stays off and he learns how to love the real world.

Reyes:(smiles and takes his hand) I think you are getting the hang of this job.

Guard: Wrong... answer! [He hits Mulder and walks to the door of the cell] No sleeping!

Guard: What are you thinking?

Mulder: About my son... about his mother.

Guard: Wrong answer! [He swings at Mulder and misses] What are you thinking?

Mulder: What do you want from me?!

Guard: Wrong... answer! [He swings at Mulder again, they grapple before the guard throttles Mulder with his baton] I want answers, you hear me? I want answers! [He leaves]

Scully: Mulder. Mulder!

Mulder: I smelled you coming, Clarice.

Scully: Oh... Damn it, Mulder. It's not funny to see you putting on that act.

Mulder: No, that is funny. What's not funny is what they do to you in here if you don't put on that act. [They embrace, Skinner averts his eyes allowing them a little privacy] Come here, you big, bald, beautiful man.

Skinner: The only thing you're going to be kissing, Mulder, is your sweet ass good-bye, with the trouble you're in.

Mulder: Uh-huh, I kind of gathered that, right around the 50th brainwashing session. (he kisses Scully on the hand)

Reyes: What is the point of all of this? To destroy a man who seeks the truth, or to destroy the truth so no man can seek it? Either way, you lose.

Mulder: (to Kersh) Yes. I'd like to congratulate you, on succeeding where so many before you have failed. A bullet between the eyes would have been preferable to this charade. But I've learned to pretend over the past nine years — to pretend that my victories mattered only to realise that no one was keeping score. To realise that liars do not fear the truth if there are enough liars. That the devil is just one man with a plan, but evil, true evil, is a collaboration of men, which is what we have here today. If I am a guilty man, my crime is in daring to believe; that the truth will out and that no one lie can live forever. I believe it still. Much as you try to bury it, the truth is out there. Greater than your lies, the truth wants to be known. You will know it. It'll come to you, as it's come to me, faster than the speed of light. [Notices the ghosts of Krycek & X standing behind the panel of judges] You may believe yourselves rid of your headache now, and maybe you are... but you've only done it by cutting off your own heads.

Doggett: [answering phone] Yeah... I'll tell her. [He hangs up]

Scully: Who was it?

Doggett: Skinner.

Scully: Agent Doggett?

Doggett: Death by lethal injection.

Frohike: [Mulder is urinating at the roadside] Hey hotshot. Might have the common courtesy of doing your little business downwind.

Frohike: For crying out loud. All you're going to do is get yourself killed.

Scully: Mulder! What are you doing?

Mulder: [The Lone Gunmen have vanished] I'll be right with you, Scully.

Cigarette Smoking Man: What's the matter, Agent Mulder? You come to see the wise man but you look as if you've seen a ghost.

Mulder: You're not a wise man, you're a dead man. Just like Krycek and X.

Cigarette Smoking Man: You see a dead man, Agent Scully?

Scully: I hoped and prayed you were dead, you chain-smoking, son of a bitch.

Cigarette Smoking Man: You waste your time. Ask Mulder. He knows the futility of hope and prayers. He knows the truth now. You have told her the truth, haven't you, Fox? I helped you find it.

Mulder: You didn't help me. You sent me to that government facility knowing exactly what I'd find.

Cigarette Smoking Man: And now you've refused to speak it. Not to Scully, not to anyone, even though it would have saved your life. You damn me for my secrets, but you're afraid to speak the truth.

Mulder: You call me afraid? Look at you sitting alone in the dark like a fossil.

Cigarette Smoking Man: It's the final refuge. The last place to hide from those who are insidiously taking power now.

Scully: Who?

Cigarette Smoking Man: The aliens. They fear this place, its geology. Magnetite, like that which brought down the original UFO in Roswell. Indian wisemen realised this over 2,000 years ago. They hid here, and watched their own culture die. The original shadow government.

Cigarette Smoking Man: My story's scared every president since Truman in '47.

Mulder: [To Scully] You don't have to hear this.

Scully: No, I wanna hear it, Mulder.

Cigarette Smoking Man: Ten centuries ago the Mayans were so afraid that their calendar stopped on the exact date that my story begins. December 22, the year 2012. The date of the final alien invasion. Mulder can confirm the date. He saw it at Mount Weather... where our own 'Secret Government' will be hiding when it all comes down.

Mulder: Yeah, you smile... feeling drunk with power. The power to do nothing.

Cigarette Smoking Man: My power comes from telling you. Seeing your powerlessness hearing it. They wanted to kill you, Fox. I protected you all these years... waiting for this moment... to see you broken. Afraid. Now you can die.

Scully: What are you thinking? Mulder?

Mulder: I'm thinking... I'm a guilty man. I've failed in every respect. I deserve the harshest punishment for my crimes.

Scully: You don't believe that.

Mulder: I believe... that I sat in a motel room like this with you when we first met... and I tried to convince you of the truth. And in that respect, I succeeded, but... in every other way... I've failed.

Scully: You don't believe that either.

Mulder: Mm. I've been chasing after monsters with a butterfly net. You heard the man — the date's set. I can't change that.

Scully: You wouldn't tell me. Not because you were afraid or broken... but because you didn't want to accept defeat.

Mulder: Well, I was afraid of what knowing would do to you. I was afraid that it would crush... your spirit.

Scully: Why would I accept defeat? Why would I accept it, if you won't? Mulder, you say that you've failed, but you only fail if you give up. And I know you — you can't give up. It's what I saw in you when we first met. It's what made me follow you... why I'd do it all over again.

Mulder: And look what it's gotten you.

Scully: And what has it gotten you? Not your sister. Nothing that you've set out for. But you won't give up, even now. You've always said that you want to believe. But believe in what Mulder? If this is the truth that you've been looking for, then what is left to believe in?

Mulder: I want to believe that... the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us... as part of something greater than us -greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen, to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.